Guide · about 15 minutes
No budget, no staff, no list, and a group chat with forty people in it. That is where most alumni associations begin. This is the order of work that gets one standing in three to six months.
Before step one
An association is three things: people, a purpose they agree on, and a list of who they are. Skip the purpose and you get a chat group that goes quiet by March.
An association whose first message asks for money gets one poor response and struggles to ask again. Spend year one building the list and doing something useful for students. The appeal can come in year two, to people who already know you.
It should fit on the website and in an email to the head of the institution without editing. For example: "The Riverside College Alumni Association keeps graduates in touch with each other and with the college, and helps current students into work." If yours needs a second sentence, you will be explaining it at every meeting for five years.
The order of work
Three to six months from the first conversation to the first event. Each step unblocks the next, which is why the order matters more than the speed.
Five who come to meetings beat forty who like the idea. Pick for reliability rather than seniority, and cover several decades of leavers: an association founded by one year group tends to stay one year group.
Agree the purpose, the name and who does what next. Take minutes, however informal. A written record is what stops the same argument happening three times.
See the head, the principal or the registrar before you launch anything public. Ask for two things: permission to use the name, and access to whatever alumni records exist. Offer something back, such as a careers evening for final-year students.
One or two pages, agreed while everyone is getting along, because that is the only time it can be written calmly. What goes in it is below.
A chair, a secretary, a treasurer, and one person who owns the member list and the website. Set terms of one or two years now, so handing over is routine rather than a crisis.
Combine old registers, class group chats, the last reunion's invitation list and the people who find you. Ask only for what you will use: five fields is enough, as below.
A bank account in the association's name, never a personal one, with two signatories. Whether you must register formally depends on your country; more below.
In that order, a few weeks apart. The event is what makes people register, so the place to register has to exist first. The trap is a full room and no record of who came.
Step four in detail
Keep the signed copy somewhere the next committee will find it, not in one person's email. In AlumDeck that place is the members-only documents area: notices, minutes and accounts as text with an optional PDF attached, served only to signed-in members.
Step six in detail
Every extra field is a reason for someone to stop filling in the form, and one more thing to keep safe. Ask only for what you will use.
| Field | Why you want it | Keep in mind |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | So classmates recognise each other | Ask for the name used at school too, if it has changed |
| Year of leaving | Reunions, class pages and the directory all hang off it | Decide now how you record people who left early |
| Email address | The one channel that reaches everybody | Record that they agreed to hear from you, and when |
| City and country | Regional meet-ups, and knowing who is near a speaker | A city is enough; nobody needs a street address |
| Occupation | Careers evenings, mentoring and speakers | Optional, and it changes; ask again each year |
Step seven in detail
Never a personal account, however temporary. Two signatories, statements the treasurer can show at the annual meeting, and a simple spreadsheet of what came in and went out. That is enough bookkeeping for most associations in their first years.
It depends on where you are and on whether you hold money, employ anyone or want a tax benefit for donors. Ask a local accountant or an established association nearby. Get the answer in writing and keep it with the constitution.
Year one is for building the list. If you introduce a fee in year two or three, keep a free way to stay in touch, because the alumni who drift away are the ones you most want back.
Step eight in detail
The event is what turns a list into an association. The screenshots are from the live demo.
the reunion page
the photos, a week later
the write-up
The website
An association is only as durable as its record of who belongs to it. That record must not live on one person's laptop.
Whatever you use, the site has to do five things:
For the first twenty members, a page and a spreadsheet are fine. The moment you are copying the same address into three places, or only one person can say who is a member, stop propping the spreadsheet up.
Who owns the data if we stop paying? What does this cost in year five, not year one? Can the next committee take it over without the person who set it up?
Who you are
Say who you are, what you are for and who is on the committee. In AlumDeck the About page, the committee roster and the history timeline are part of the public site from the first day.
Your first event
A date, a venue, a capacity and an RSVP list you can count. Members answer Yes, Maybe or No; a Yes on a ticketed event issues a free QR ticket for the door.
Year one
Two events, one newsletter and one annual meeting. Small, repeatable, and handed over by design.
| When | What happens | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Founding meeting: purpose, name and roles agreed, minutes written | Chair |
| Month 2 | Meeting with the institution; constitution drafted and agreed | Chair and secretary |
| Month 3 | Bank account opened; website up; join link shared in every class group chat | Treasurer, website owner |
| Month 4 | First event announced with a date, a venue and a capacity | Events lead |
| Month 5 or 6 | First event; attendance recorded; photos and a thank-you sent within a week | Events lead, website owner |
| Month 9 | A short newsletter: what happened, what is next, one request for help | Secretary |
| Month 12 | Annual meeting: accounts presented, officers elected, next year agreed | Whole committee |
Sample data in the live demo
An invented college in the live demo, with an events list, a reunion page, a committee roster and a photo archive. Open it and click around as a visitor, or sign in as a member.
Try it in the demoQuestions
It depends on your country and on whether you will hold money in the association's name. In many places an unregistered association with a written constitution and a bank account is normal. Elsewhere, holding funds, employing anyone or claiming a tax benefit needs registration. Ask a local accountant, or an established association nearby what they did.
Not in year one. A fee turns every conversation into a sales conversation while you are still finding people, and collecting small sums from a scattered group costs more effort than it raises. If you add one later, keep a free way to stay on the list.
If you use AlumDeck: membership is free in the software, and it does not collect fees. It records gifts you have received and emails numbered receipts.
Ask for something small and specific, and offer something concrete back. Permission to use the name and access to old registers, in exchange for running a careers evening, is a trade most heads will take. Then report back afterwards: an association that only ever asks does not get asked again.
The place to register comes first, and the event a few weeks later. The event is what makes people sign up, so the sign-up has to exist before it. The trap is a well-attended evening with no record of who came.
Fix two events a year and hold them even when they are small. Put a second and third person on every account, list and inbox. Write decisions down. Associations rarely collapse from a lack of enthusiasm; they stop when the one person who held everything stops replying.
Say so before you choose software. AlumDeck's join form offers leaving years from 1940 to this year, and it stores the leaving year as one number, so an academic year written as 2012/13 is recorded as a single year. If either matters to your institution, ask us before you buy.
The live demo is a working alumni association site with invented data. Sign in as an admin or a member and click anything; it puts itself back every night.
Sign-in details on the demo pageResets every night