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Volunteer Roles & Recognition

Make an Impact on Your FSILG

MIT's FSILGs can benefit like never before from the attention and expertise of alumni volunteers, the lifeblood of healthy organizations. Find out how!

Volunteer roles and best practices

Alumni can play numerous roles in the FSILG community from advising chapter officers, to managing chapter real estate, to providing house operations guidance. Volunteer opportunities fall within three main alumni-led FSILG organizations-visit each to learn how you can have an impact on your chapter or the FSILG system as a whole.

Recording volunteer service

Make sure your chapter's volunteers get the recognition they deserve by helping the Alumni Association keep track of them. Recording terms of service for past or current volunteers is easy! Simply ask a House Corporation or Advisory Board officer to send Marilyn Finlay and Bob Ferarra a list, preferably as an Excel spread sheet attachment, with the following information for each volunteer:

  • last name
  • first name
  • graduation year
  • volunteer position or title
  • start date (month and year)
  • stop date (month and year-or none if current)

Within a week or less, the information will be entered into the Alumni Association database and displayed in the Online Alumni Directory. Chapter officers may then retrieve this or other previously recorded volunteer information by filling out an FSILG Data Request Form.

Volunteer recognition opportunities

FSILGs are encouraged to use the following opportunities to recognize special work by a chapter or its volunteers:

  • Outstanding Alumnus Advisor of the Year Awards: These awards recognize outstanding service to Chapter House Corporations, Advisory Boards, Individual FSILG or the whole FSILG community. Please contact the FSILG Office to find out how to nominate someone. See the individuouals who have been honored the last several years.

  • Annual Alumni Association Volunteer Awards: Each fall, volunteer awards are presented at the Alumni Leadership Conference to recognize, honor, and reward outstanding accomplishment and service to the Alumni Association and MIT. Nominations are solicited annually from volunteer leaders and an awards committee meets in the spring to review all nominations.The committee presents recommendations to the Association's Board of Directors for approval at the Board's June meeting. Have someone in mind to receive one of these awards? Contact Bonnie Jones HM, director of Alumni Recognition Services, about submitting a nomination.

  • Volunteer Honor Roll of Service: Do you know someone or have you heard of someone who's done a super job of volunteering? The Association's online Volunteer Honor Roll of Service is a great way to say thank you and publicly recognize this volunteer for a job well done. Nominations are evaluated twice a year after mid-January and mid-July.

  • D. Reed Weedon '41 Award: This annual award recognizes FSILG chapters with strong alumni-outreach programs.

Other useful volunteer information

Along with the Alumni Association, both the FSILG Office of MIT's Division of Student Life and the FSILG Cooperative, Inc. , the FSILG-owned purchasing and member services cooperative, are devoted to sustaining and improving the future of MIT living groups and offer excellent resources for FSILG volunteers.

Volunteers needing frequent access to MIT may also find these resources useful:

  • Obtain an alumni ID card. The card is free but getting it requires a daytime visit to the MIT Card Office in the basement of the Stratton Student Center (W20-021).
  • Obtain campus parking assistance. For quarterly AILG breakfast parking, contact Fran Miles in the FSILG Office. For other occasions, consider the occasional parking pass, available through the MIT Parking Office.