Leadership Assembly 2013 Class Leaders Working Session October 24, 2013 1. What compels alumnae to come back/get involved? • Making new friends at Barnard events • Events interacting with Barnard students – • Learning (people loved the professor lecture at Leadership) • Personal calls For milestones: How do you boost attendance and maintain enthusiasm from the last milestone reunion? • Personal phone calls and letters • Divide the lists and try to call everyone • Consider having class create a scholarship fund to help people to come to reunion and/or offer free housing with NYC or local classmates • Phone squad reach out (different from calls for Annual Giving) just dedicated to making calls encouraging attendance at reunion • Mini reunions (ideas below) For other decades: How do you keep your classmates connected? • Mini reunions • The Athena Film Festival (February 6-9, 2014) can be a good venue for cheap mini reunion or the many free lectures (i.e. Power Talk on December 3 rd by Sylvia Ann Hewlett) and/or performances on campus- (meal or drinks before/after) • When traveling connect with alumnae in different cities in US and abroad • Individual reach outs to alums; when calling alums find out their interests and then encourage them to attend events on campus that may be of interest • Lower price gala event for those that can’t afford $500, especially younger alums; suggested price of $125 per head perhaps at the Natural History museum hosted by Ellen Futter. (We have a post gala event that has a lower ticket price and perhaps that could be publicized more to class mates) • Tri-college events • Create long distance mentoring program to connect students with alumnae outside of NYC; either for students who don’t live in tri-state area or those who are interested in working in a different region when they graduate • Have alumnae serve as mentors to recent graduates who stay in NYC (and/or outside of NYC) to be a resource on work and non-work issues such as providing names of doctors, neighborhoods, finding apartments, etc.
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Suggestions of online book group or groups either by class year, decade or entire alumnae group. Perhaps we could start with one annual book for the beginning of the school year with facilitated discussion by a professor.
2. Use of technology- how do you use social media to connect to Barnard and each other? What are the most successful technology strategies? • • • • • • • • • • •
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Website needs to be more user friendly Several people suggested eliminating a sign in; while this may be needed to register for events, perhaps more content could be available w/out a sign-in. “website sucks” (several alumnae young and older shared this complaint and several were willing to try to help in redesign) Create Social media class officer (also consider specific social media role for an AABC board member and have committee-potential members identified) Send an email to your class focused on describing a few class mates doing interesting work (professional or volunteer) In order to get more non-milestone news send prompts for classmates to answer that could be shown in class notes or on class web page such as “Barnard prepared me for ….” Create class Face Book page (some older classes may need help with this) with links to free Barnard events and taped lectures, etc. There is a need to create guidelines around FaceBook and Twitter use such as can classmates sell products on class FB page Class blog (Deena Shenker) was well received but is time consuming; consider hiring part time social media person to give “fresh voice” to Barnard alumnae updates Create a Barnard app Push out technology for Barnard updates so that updates and even the online Barnard magazine include links to online taped lectures and events on campus as well as streaming video of live events/lectures/etc. (similar to Giving Day format) Someone suggested “Throwback Thursdays” where pictures from Barnard archives are sent out to alumnae
3. How do alumnae communicate to each other that Barnard is there for them for the rest of their lives? • Remind alums of lifetime ability to audit classes for free • Remind alums of free career coaching through career office, free webinars and coaching for older alums to help them identify ways to stay engaged, make a contribution and leverage their experience during their retirement. • Remind alums of wide variety of free events on campus • While the classes offered to alums (such as Mary Gordon) are well received, many alumnae can’t afford to pay $600 for a class. Consider offering free taped
or live-streamed lectures by professors and events offered on campus. Perhaps less expensive online webinars is another option.
Get the message out about regional groups, mini reunions, etc. • Consider having events that span more than one class year for mini reunion since often friendships are not specific just to one graduating year • Harness the power of online social media and connection using Barnard Giving Day as a successful model OTHER: • Several people requested list of attendees at Class Leaders event. There may be privacy issues, but perhaps there is a way to create a forum for this group to continue to brainstorm and connect without violating privacy issues. • Some people expressed a need for more alumnae office support • A few people felt that some staff was not as responsive as they should be, while others disagreed • Create survey monkey to send to class leaders/officers who attended Thursday workshop to get their feedback on top priorities so that they board and staff can try to implement change on a few key initiatives that were viewed as highest priority • A member of the class of 1971 said she and others classmates felt there was the need for the Barnard administration to apologize and acknowledge some of the mistakes made by Barnard administration during that period of unrest. There is a view that current administration doesn’t want to touch this issue. i.e. some professors refused to write letters of recommendations for students that were active in the campus protests.