{"id":12128,"date":"2021-03-02T16:22:26","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T16:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aluminati.net\/?p=12128"},"modified":"2022-10-28T12:11:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T11:11:37","slug":"creating-an-alumni-community-in-a-changing-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aluminati.net\/creating-an-alumni-community-in-a-changing-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating an Alumni Community in a Changing World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our February Creating Connection Roundtable event welcomed <\/span>Hannah Fox<\/span><\/a>, Head of Alumni Relations at <\/span>Regent\u2019s University<\/span><\/a>, London. <\/span><\/h3>\n

A brand-new alumni team started at Regent\u2019s in January 2020 with the vision of creating an engaging alumni programme from scratch. After two months of building their strategy, their direction had to change dramatically overnight when the pandemic hit the UK. In this session, Hannah reflected on how Regents responded to the challenges that COVID-19 brought, how they got the programme off the ground remotely, and how they turned challenges into positives which eventually led to a successful outcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time of writing, Hannah had worked in the sector for 9 years, starting at UCL before spending 5 years in various alumni engagement and fundraising roles at London Business School.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A Fresh Start<\/b><\/p>\n

Regent\u2019s University is a beautiful and reasonably small, private institution, with 6000 London based students and 450 staff members.\u00a0 Before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the university\u2019s alumni relations programme had been running for just over a year.\u00a0 In 2019, Regent\u2019s decided to put further investment into its alumni relations and make the programme more central to the other activities at the university.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hannah Fox joined the team in early 2020 and in her November 2019 job interview she suggested that the programme would effectively be starting from scratch stating \u201cin an ideal world, you would love to take a year off from all your other activities and be able to spend that year talking to people\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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So there they were, in January 2020 with a new team, a new direction and a new \u2018strategy\u2019.\u00a0 Whilst the strategy was new to Regent\u2019s University, it was already tried and tested at other institutions and Hannah set about to implement this proven strategy at Regent\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the university\u2019s student-alumni body was 85% international, the consensus was that a brand-new alumni relations programme should involve a great deal of physical interaction between the department and its alumni.\u00a0 This meant bringing people back to the main campus and recreating that nostalgic feeling, or working with the VC and recruitment team to go to international locations to be present for their alumni.<\/span><\/p>\n

With this in mind, on 1st of March 2020, Hannah and her team had a class reunion planned; a series of recruitment events planned across the West Coast of the US with several alumni volunteers already signed up to assist; a large \u2018global speakers\u2019 series underway with over 100 people attending campus events and the university had just launched its Campus Access Card which allowed alumni to access the campus and its resources for work or research purposes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThings were good, and things were on track…and then the 16th March came along!\u201d Hannah Fox.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lockdown<\/b><\/p>\n

The first UK nationwide lockdown came into immediate effect.\u00a0 For Hannah and her team, this meant no events, no travel and more importantly, no face to face meetings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Overnight, their entire strategy from creating volunteer opportunities, planning events, creating networks and bringing people together had to take a whole new direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

The one thing the team still had left in their arsenal was the ability to talk to people and that became the sole focus moving forward.\u00a0 With no knowledge on how long the lockdown was going to last, they established some new goals.<\/span><\/p>\n