This weekend I went with my wife to her 15th reunion at Williams College. You would be harder pressed to find a greater disparity than the difference between the communication with a Williams grad versus what I receive from my alma mater, University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
My wife is involved with some of the fundraising for her class, as a result there is usually something in the mail from them every week.
I get the alumni magazine and an email from the department I graduated from, and that’s about it.
As a result, my wife’s class of 500 students, at my last check, gives as much to their school as my class does. I believe my class has about 3,000 students, of course this number is squishy, I think there was 3,000 my freshman year, but we were told only 2 of 3 would make it to graduation, at the same time students were added to my class from community colleges and other sources that kept the number fairly constant.
How does this culture start, and can it be recreated by the larger organization? Is it squelched by bureaucracy?
The good news is that I finally have a Willams ’93 baseball cap, and shall now refer to myself as J. Joseph Wall III.
One reply on “Marketing Your Past”
Allegiance to one’s alma mater is not automatic. For the school, it starts from the day you walk onto campus and it never ends. Well, only a handful of schools recognize that, and both yours and mine are in that oblivious bucket…
mp/m