Recent Grads & Greek Life: Now What?
We’re almost to those delicious carefree months of summer, but before we get there we have to celebrate our graduating seniors and all they’ve done! Whether your chapter celebrates with emotional senior send offs, pub crawls or alumni initiations, in the back of our minds we all worry about one thing: will our graduating friends still be involved in the chapter?
For many grads, sadly, that’s not the case, but you as a chapter exec or active collegiate member, can change that! Keep your younger alumni/recent grads involved by, what else, reaching out to them! If you have chapter events that are open to the public, or chapter events specifically for collegians and alumni, go out of your way to invite your alumni back! This means sending emails, creating Evites, texting and calling, and even sending physical invitations in the snail mail (buying stamps suck but guaranteed it’ll get the job done). This also means hosting events tailored to the interests and needs of your alumni. Yes, some of the older alumni might not enjoy a Gossip Girl marathon at the house but keep in mind, when targeting the young alumni, that your young alumni are just that, young! Root beer pong tournament? GLEE-themed karaoke night? Take them down memory lane, remind them why college is so much fun, and encourage them to get and stay involved.
Here are some great programming tips and ideas for engaging young alumni (courtesy of the National Panhellenic Conference):
One last tip: keep your alumni contact information updated through ChapterBoard! Alumni can use ChapterBoard too (alumni discussions and calendars) and it’s a great way to keep alumni up to date about chapter events, involved in the chapter’s activities, and in contact with collegiate members.
A big CONGRATS to all the 2011 Greek grads! We love our alumni! We’re collegians for four years but we’re Greek forever!
