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.