Bright Ideas:
Four Ways to Extend Your Reach by Working With Alumni
Submitted by: Linda Athearn, USA Funds Services, (866) 497-8723, Ext. 8014

To promote debt-management and fiscal responsibility, many financial-aid administrators work hard to provide students with information and tools to prepare them for life after college. This effort can continue beyond students’ graduation, and your campus’ alumni-relations office can be an important partner in the process.

USA Funds®’ Debt-Management Team suggests the following four strategies that financial-aid and alumni-relations offices could team up to employ in educating graduates about sound money management:

1. Developing guides for life after college. The alumni association of one postsecondary institution employing this tactic sees its graduating classes as more than a recruitment ground for new members. The alumni association also sees a need to educate graduating students about the financial and practical challenges of life after college. All of the school’s 2002 graduates received a booklet that covered the following topics:
   
   
   • Finding affordable housing
   • Obtaining the right health, car and renters' insurance
   • Budgeting
   • How to be successful during the first year in the workplace
     
     
2. Assisting with young-alumni groups. A growing trend with alumni associations is to develop groups of alumni who have been out of school 10 years or less. Like the guides for life after college, young-alumni groups focus on information related to issues important to this age group. Some topics include the following:
   
   
   • Auto financing
   • House-buying tips
   • Retirement planning
   • Financial management
   • Student-loan repayment
   • Budgeting
   • Career management
     
     
   The financial-aid office and alumni association can coordinate efforts to provide materials or programs to this audience about student-loan-repayment options, deferment, forbearance, loan consolidation and budgeting. Your school's alumni-relations office can tell you whether a young-alumni group has been established on your campus.
   
   
3. Planning special reunion-event programming. Reunion events are a good way to mix personal-enrichment programs with a visit to the alma mater. Many schools now offer a programming series as part of class-reunion or homecoming festivities. Financial-aid staff could partner with the alumni association to offer a program about alumni giving, career-planning strategies, and savings and retirement planning.
   
   
   For information about whether programming is offered to alumni, and whether you can include money-management information in the programming, check with your alumni-relations office.
   
   
4. Including debt-management information in alumni mailings. Alumni often receive mailings from the school several times during the year, updating them about the latest campus news and soliciting funds for the school. By working with alumni relations, financial-aid staff can contribute money-management information to these mailings.
   
   If your campus' alumni-relations office sends a newsletter to graduates, your financial-aid office can offer to supply articles to the newsletter on a regular basis. Topics of these articles could be targeted based on age, so alumni receive information that is likely to be relevant to their situation. Some topics include the following:
   
   
   • Student-loan repayment
   • Saving and paying for college
   • Scholarship-search techniques

Relationships built between financial-aid and alumni-relations offices can bring tremendous value to both offices. The financial-aid office benefits by being able to educate constituents, beyond the confines of campus, about issues that could affect the school’s default rate. The alumni-relations office benefits by having alumni who are better educated about financial matters and may be more inclined to give financial contributions to the school.