Without a goal for the number and types of events your alumni community will hold, leaders may compete for budget resources and/or key event dates. An ideal way to determine how many events you wish to plan is to break down your list of past events first by type of event. 

Consider what kind of events are essential to the life of your club or group? What events could you add to make your calendar year more engaging?  Do you have enough events to attract younger alumni or new members? Do you have the right amount of fundraising events? Consider the following event types when forming your goals:

• social events and mixers
• networking and career guidance
• lectures and workshops
• recognition and receptions
• fundraisers
• committee meetings

You can download, fill in and print this goal setting worksheet for alumni groups (PDF) to help organize your goals.

Volunteers are the backbone of your community. You must have enough volunteers to carry out activities and events as well as general organizational duties, such as membership development, budget and finance and communications. By developing a structure with deep resources at the committee level, you can provide a natural pipeline of volunteers to bring up the leadership ladder.  When forming goals around your volunteer base, here are some questions to consider:

Is your volunteer base as strong and diverse as it could be? Do you have the positions needed to fulfill all your programming goals? Is there an area of expertise that could be strengthened by new volunteers? Does your group reflect the diversity of the alumni body?

Depending on your group, you may need volunteers representing many different skill sets:

• program and event planning
• communications
• web development and social media
• leadership or achievement nominations
• volunteer recruitment, retention and membership
• fundraising, financial management and investing 

You can download, fill in and print this goal setting worksheet for alumni groups (PDF) to help organize your goals.

A dues paying membership goal should be based upon the market penetration percentage of your alumni population. A 10 percent market penetration is suggested. Therefore, a community with 1,000 alumni should plan to have 100 dues-paying members. When setting a membership goal, you should determine a reasonable dues amount for your community that will in turn support the budget of your organization and the basic costs of membership (newsletter, mailings, etc). You must also determine the number of dues paying members there have been in the past, preferably examining the history of the last five years. Consider setting a multiple year goal in the area. For example 10 percent of your local population is 100 alumni, but over the last five years, your alumni community has not had more than 45 dues paying members annually. It may be unrealistic to plan to achieve a goal of 100 dues paying members this year, but by planning over the next three years, with dues paying membership goals of 65, 85, and 100 respectively, you develop a reasonable objective.

Consider how many young alumni members make up your volunteer base, should you offer free or discounted membership to them? Are you attracting enough of this cohort? Is there a membership level that should be eliminated or added? Consider the following membership levels as a starting point to building the appropriate membership structure for your group: 

You can download, fill in and print this goal setting worksheet for alumni groups (PDF) to help organize your goals.