Event Photos: New York

Last month, I mentioned that New York's kick-off event at Johnny Utah's was attended by over 100 people. These are some pictures from that great event.

Keeping volunteers engaged

Several alumni chapters are led by a whole team of people rather than just one or two individuals. Keeping all members of the leadership team engaged and involved can be a difficult task. To help with this issue, I want to provide you all with some advice from one of my favorite books, The New Breed: Understanding & Equipping the 21st Century Volunteer by Jonathan McKee and Thomas W. McKee.

One of the best things an individual can do to lead a successful volunteer organization is understand the difference between a “leader” and a “manager.”

According to McKee and McKee, “Leaders set the vision for where an organization is going. Management paves the road to get there.”

When working on chapter programs, it’s easy to get lost in the details and the managing of events and volunteers. To be successful, your leadership team must first know the vision and mission of the group. And they will look to you as a leader to set and define the vision and mission. I recommend taking time at your next meeting to establish mission and vision statements for your group.

Begin by asking these questions provided by McKee and McKee:

1. Who are we?


2. What do we do?


3. Whom do we serve? (Who are our members? Who are our customers? Who are the people who benefit from what we do?)


4. What benefit (service, impact) do we provide for those we serve?


5. Why are we unique (Why are we better at what we do than any other organization or group)?

After answering these questions, develop your mission and vision statements, keeping mind that McKee and McKee define the two as:

A mission statement states your cause. It states why you exist and the service you provide for the people you serve.

A vision statement states your future. It declares where you want to go. A vision statement is strategic—it puts strategic legs on the mission statement to capture the energy of your volunteers.

Once these statements are established, you and your leadership team will be able to better define roles and responsibilities for members of the leadership team and hopefully understanding those roles will help keep each member engaged.

If you do take the time to establish a vision for your group and a mission statement, I hope you will share them with me!

Nationally Televised Games

Last month, I sent you the link for the 2009 football season, this month I want to point out that two of the games will be nationally televised. Those games are:


SMU vs. TCU
October 3, 7p.m. CDT
The MountainWest Sports Network


SMU vs. Houston
October 24, 6:30 p.m. CDT
CBS – C

Chapter Spotlight: San Francisco

On Thursday, April 16, the San Francisco Alumni Chapter held a successful wine tasting event at the Press Club (Co-Founder, Jan Wiginton ’98). 52 Alumni were in attendance and fun was had by all!

Summer fun

Summer is a great time for family oriented chapter events. Some ideas include:


SMU alumni day at a local aquarium or zoo
SMU alumni day at a local sporting event (professional and minor league baseball is a great idea in the summer)
Jazz in the park
Picnic in the park
Shakespeare in the park
Softball or kickball tournaments
Summer BBQ

Regional Committee of the Alumni Board

I work with chapters as your staff liaison, but chapter activities, functions and resources are overseen by the Regional Committee of the Alumni Board. I want to let you know the names of the alumni that will be serving on this committee this board year. This committee has three on-campus meetings every year and meets periodically via conference call. As a chapter leader, you are an ad hoc member of this committee. If you are interested in learning more, please let me know.

Stephen Corley ‘90, Chair

Chris Ainsworth ’94
Robert Cabes ‘91
Doug Linneman ‘99
Dennis Murphree ‘69
Mark Robertson ‘85
Scott Rozzell ‘71
Jesusita Santillan ‘06
Jeff Thrall ‘71

Planning Ahead

As we come to the end of the school and fiscal years, and as you begin planning for the year ahead, I encourage you and your leadership teams to try to plan out your entire next year’s programming calendar. Even if you don’t have venues or ideas completely together, it is good to consider which months you will do events and what kind of events you will host. The sooner you can share such a calendar with me, the better, because I can then compare it to other SMU events I know will be happening in your area. Remember, we encourage you to diversify your programming to include family, cultural and social/networking events. Sit down with your team and talk about what’s going on where you live and when. And keep these questions in mind:

• Which events can we collaborate with?
• What is the best time of year to do certain things?
• What connections do we have as a team that will make our events even better?
• Is there something unique to our city we can plan that can become our “signature” event?
  

And, as always, if you need help, advice or suggestions just drop me a line or give me a call!

Marketing Chapter Events

Chapters have found many different ways to communicate with alumni in their cities such as listservs, Google and Yahoo groups, Facebook, e-vites, etc. A lot of groups work with me to market their events through the SMU marketing team. Below is the process for requesting your event be marketed through SMU. Please note that the marketing team sends out emails for many groups on campus. They are strategic in determining when they send out emails and do their best not to bombard alumni with too many emails at one time. They are not able to send out emails on a moment’s notice and not all requests for e-invitations are approved due to heavy workloads at certain times of year.

Marketing Request Process:

1. Fill out an event request form and note you would like to request to market the event through an SMU e-invitation. The event request form can be found here: http://smu.edu/alumni/chapters/resources/Chapter%20Event%20Request%20Form.pdf
2. Submit the form to me (via email to lyndsey@smu.edu)
3. I will then submit a request form with the marketing team. NOTE: Requests for e-marketing must be submitted 30 business days (roughly six weeks) before the email send date and emails are recommended to be sent four weeks before an event. In totality, the request needs to be made 10 weeks before the event date.
4. The marketing team will approve the request or not. If they are able to get it on their “send” calendar, they will provide me with a send date and a reminder date as well as the date that copy for the e-invitation is due.
5. I will work with you to make sure we meet the necessary deadlines.

Please note that if you cannot meet the deadlines to utilize the benefit of marketing your events through SMU, please submit an event request form to me anyway. Regardless of how you invite alumni to attend your events, I would like a record of all events. Also, not as much notice is needed to add your events to the Alumni Event Calendar on the SMU website, and I encourage all of you to ask me to have your events posted. Check out the calendar here: http://smu.edu/alumni/events/

Chapter Spotlight: Chicago

The Chicago chapter, under the leadership of Buffy Bains ’05 and Emily Childers ’03, partnered with National Major Giving, Meadows School of the Arts and the House Theatre of Chicago (creative director is Nate Allen ‘00) to host an event on March 6. Around 90 alumni turned out to attend a production of Rose and the Rime and attend a post-show reception.

Facebook

Alumni groups have found Facebook groups to be a great resource for connecting with alumni and marketing events. The New York chapter posted its first event on Facebook—a networking mixer—and over 90 people RSVPed! If you have not already started a group, I encourage you to look into it. If you need help, please contact me.

Here are the names of some of the existing Facebook groups so you can look at what others have created:

SMU New York Alumni Chapter
SMU Alumni – Austin, TX
SMU African-American Alumni Associates
SMU NOLA Alumni
SMU Alumni – LOS ANGELES
Houston SMU Alums

2009 Football Schedule

The football schedule has officially been posted. I know many of you will plan watch parties this fall, so check it out:

http://smumustangs.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/sched/smu-m-footbl-sched.html

Every Dollar Counts

Alumni Giving and Relations has a goal of achieving 25 percent giving participation from our alumni this fiscal year. The end of the fiscal year is just around the corner on May 31. If you have not already made your annual gift, I encourage you to help us reach our goal and consider making a gift (no matter the size) by visiting our website:

http://smu.edu/giving

Remember that every dollar given helps support the quality of life for SMU students. Also, please know that we appreciate all you do to give to SMU on a regular basis by serving as a chapter volunteer.

Chapter Spotlight: New Orleans

Hats off to Kara Morgan '96 for planning a successful networking mixer for the New Orleans Chapter on February 4.

SMU Magazine

Did you happen to read the article about chapter programs in the fall/winter 2008 edition of the SMU Magazine?

If not, you can read it here:

http://blog.smu.edu/smumagazine/2008/11/post_1.html

Measuring Success

Our goal for red chapters is for 5% of the “email-able” alumni population in each city/region to be engaged through chapter programming during the 2010 fiscal year. I have posted those numbers below to give you a better idea of the number of alumni in your area we hope will attend one chapter event between June 1, 2009 and May 31, 2010. In an effort to better track how many alumni are attending chapter events, I ask that you please mail or fax sign-in sheets from events to me. I think this will be a great resource for our office and for you all as we continue to expand the chapter program and seek additional resources. Keep in mind, this is the first year we are actively setting measureable goals and tracking the number of alumni attending chapter events. I know many of you already surpass these goals, so please do not let the number stand in your way!

Goals:

Atlanta: engage 23 alumni through chapter activities

Chicago: engage 34 alumni through chapter activities

Houston: engage 133 alumni through chapter activities

Los Angeles: engage 70 alumni through chapter activities

New York: engage 54 alumni through chapter activities

San Francisco: engage 33 alumni through chapter activities

Washington DC: engage 41 alumni through chapter activities

Spring Events

To give you an idea about what your peers are doing around the country, I have listed planned chapter events for this spring. I am sure many of you also have other things in the works and I will surely continue to post events.

February
4 – New Orleans Networking Mixer
26 – Houston Happy Hour

March
1- Atlanta Chapter – Texas Independence Day Party
6 – Chicago –SMU Night at the Chicago House Theatre (show followed by a reception)
25 – New York City Networking Mixer

April
16 – San Francisco Wine Tasting
26 – Austin Alumni Mixer (at Central Market to enjoy patio music)

May
5 – SMU Football Greats Come to Houston

Chapters Website

Visit the Chapters Website Today!

http://smu.edu/alumni/chapters/

We currently have 22 alumni chapters in America and abroad. You can find a complete listing of these chapters on the site. You can also find resources to help you as you serve as a chapter leader. The chapter handbook, a sample sign-in sheet, the event planning guide, marketing tips, the event request form and the event report form are all posted for your convenience.
We continue to seek ways to improve the website and welcome any suggestions you have.

SMU appreciates you!

Thank you for the time and dedication you spend planning events for alumni, volunteering with alumni student recruitment, helping alumni network and feel welcome in new cities and making alumni chapters successful.

Please know that the staff in the Office of Alumni Giving and Relations and the members of the Alumni Board appreciate all you do to provide opportunities for our alumni to remain connected and engaged with SMU.

I hope you will find this blog a useful tool as you continue to serve as a chapter leader. I will be sending the link out with updates the first Monday of every month. Please know you can write or call with any questions. I am available at lyndsey@smu.edu and 214-768-4752.