Everything works wonders if planned properly and precisely. Whether it is a birthday party or an alumni meet, you should know its dos and don’ts to have an excellent overall experience. Hiring a birthday party planner can make your tasks pretty easy. But what if you have to plan and organize an alumni meeting on the college campus?
You might be bewildered about what to do and what not to do in order to conduct a successful alumni meeting. Perhaps, you have landed on the correct page then. Here, we have revealed the top five hacks for you to ensure your alumni meet becomes the most memorable one.
Let’s roll together!
1. Decide a Dress Code/Theme
Why can only a Halloween party have a dress code or a theme? Surely, you can plan your upcoming alumni meet with a brilliant party theme in mind. For starters, you can go for the most famous ‘Friends Theme’ or ‘Harry Potter Theme’ to attract the maximum number of your alumni community members. You can bring down the Marvel Series stars on your campus or create a jungle-theme party for alumni to have some fun while meeting each other after years. A few more theme ideas include throwing a retro theme meeting or lighting up the aesthetics with snow-cone decorations.
Besides a theme, you can always go for deciding a dress code for an alumni meets. For example, if it is a strictly professional meeting, you can ask all the male alumni to wear a suit and all the female alumni to come in formal gowns. Moreover, you could pick the same colour for all the alumni members to wear on the day of the meeting. Organizing a theme-based alumni meet and having a dress code adds a character to the entire event. Even after years, your alumni members will recognize this reunion and have a wide smile on their faces.
2. Play Treasure Hunt
One of the most popular and evergreen ideas to make any event, meeting, or party interesting, entertaining, and forever memorable is to play treasure hunt. The same thing you can incorporate in your alumni meet itinerary for a change. Make multiple teams, including equal members, based on the total number of alumni participants in the meeting. Make tweaked word riddles for the players and hide the hint within. Let them identify what the hint is targeting and how they can discover the next step to win the game.
To make the treasure hunt playing experience more exciting for your alumni members, you can create riddles around the most famous places among students on the campus. For example, hide the first hint near the canteen or college mess area. Keep on adding places like a favourite bunking spot of the students or lunch places to make participants thrilled about the game. By doing this, you give them two things:
- One – all their memories associated with each corner of the college campus gets recollected
- Two – an opportunity to relive their memories and feel grateful for being a part of this university
3. Arrange Contests
There are multiple things to keep your alumni engaged during the reunion. However, organizing several contests could be a great way to instil a sense of learning while having some enjoyment. The most simple yet smart idea is to organize a Rubik’s cube contest. You can invite 5 to 10 volunteers from the alumni audience to step on the floor. Give them 60 seconds or two minutes worth of time and see who completes the Rubik’s cube first. You can also extend the time to around 10 or 15 minutes and host a contest about how many Rubik’s cubes one can complete in the meanwhile and declare a winner.
Except this, you can organize an extempore contest and gift a scholarship voucher or library membership to the winning alumni member. In addition to playing Rubik’s cube and an extempore competition, you can conduct singing, dancing, poetry recitation, and book reading contests in an alumni meet, too. It is not always necessary to have typical alumni meet (starting from a student speech and ending with a dignitary’s thanks note!) You can always think something out of the box to spread the word about your impressive alumni meet ideas and expect a doubled participation the next time.
4. Invite a Few Entertainers & Performers
What do you think of organizing a live music concert for your precious alumni members? Only the idea of a music concert will bring charm to your alumni meet like never before. Some colleges even insist their alumni members prepare and perform a song medley or mashup dance performance during such events.
Being an institution, you can arrange a musical karaoke night, invite some professionals, and collaborate with your alumni members to give a stunning performance during the alumni meet. Moreover, arranging for a live show or human drama could be another unique way to make the alumni reunion remarkable forever.
5. Create Instagrammable Moments
People love creating memories and stories together. If you are organizing alumni meet on your premises, why not allow your alumni members to create Instagram-able moments? To let them click thousands of pictures and snaps of the day, you can create selfie booths at the meeting venue. Try to create a captivating fashion in it. For example, you can create a backdrop of the selfie booth using the signed uniform t-shirts of alumni members.
It will make the event live, attractive, and full of vibe. Second, you can fabricate customized dinner tables for different students according to their fields or domains. Place centrepieces of solar systems on the tables of engineering students and win their hearts. Keep candles on the table of tourism management students to make them feel special.
Conclusion
Your alumni are the most valuable assets for your institution. As long as you can organize a yearly reunion, you can say you are doing enough for them. Implement these hacks in your next alumni meet, and let us know whether you nailed it or not! Remember, every little effort that you make will count in maintaining alumni relations for life.
May 25, 2022
