Young Alumni Council Report President, Joseph McLoughlin 09

Summary: The Young Alumni Council (YAC) continues to undergo organizational and functional changes as it enters the 2014 fiscal year. The executive board has been restructured again with the name of the Secretary of Membership being changed to the Vice President of Membership and the Secretary of Communication and the Secretary of Marketing and Technology being eliminated as executive board positions. With the new executive board structure set and its positions filled, the YAC executive board held a retreat to outline expectations for the future vision of the council as well as to delineate goals for the year. Following the Volunteer Leadership Forum in August, the YAC met to discuss the future vision of the council with all of its members, specifically focusing on the upcoming expectations associated with the proposed Young Alumni Ambassadors Program and the shift away from a committee structure in favor of a project structure. Young Alumni Ambassadors Program: The Young Alumni Council has collaborated with Lehigh staff to expand the expectations of its members while continuing to strive to support the universitys initiatives. In the past, many YAC members who were not in leadership positions expressed concern about being underutilized or otherwise disengaged with the overall direction and activities of the council. In response to this feedback, Lehigh Staff proposed the idea of creating an alumni outreach program in which YAC members would engage young alumni to better understand their experiences post-graduation and to collect valuable feedback as to how to reach more of the young alumni population. This concept was originally proposed as the primary function for the future of the Young Alumni Council, and it was met with much concern as many YAC members valued the committee work they had done in the past. While concerns still exist regarding the new expectations for YAC members, the YAC executive board is working closely with Lehigh staff to establish a successful new outreach program entitled Young Alumni Ambassadors Program that will support the universitys initiatives while adding value to YAC members volunteer experiences. YAC has established a project for the remainder of the 2013 calendar year to pilot the outreach program to determine its feasibility and best practices so that the program may be rolled out globally to YAC starting in January of 2014. YAC Projects: Whereas YAC was previously organized into several committees based upon the universitys needs as communicated by Lehigh staff, the council has shifted to an operational model in which its members pursue projects with finite timelines for completion. The hope is that this new organizational structure will encourage our volunteers to apply themselves to tasks that have tangible outcomes rather than sitting in a committee for an entire calendar year whose goals tended to be loosely defined and

difficult to achieve. Once a projects objectives have been completed, the Executive Vice President will oversee the closeout of the project and will help YAC members to identify new opportunities that may be pursued. In constantly maintaining a prioritized list of project ideas and having members flush out the details of the projects prior to trying to implement them, YAC will be able to keep its members constantly engaged while making significant contributions to the university through the new agile team structure. Currently, YAC is pursuing the following list of projects: Academic and Volunteer Surveys (Project Champion: Adam Kohn): Over the course of the past 2 years, YAC has worked with Lehigh Faculty and Staff to create content for two surveys, one which seeks to better understand the needs and interests of young alumni volunteers and another which seeks to provide context on the value of the education and experience Lehigh provides to its students. The purpose of this project will be to close out the efforts to compile the surveys content and to engage Lehigh staff to better understand the ultimate goals of the surveys as well as when the surveys will be deployed. The project may lead to the creation of additional content depending upon if there are any updates to the scope of each survey. Lehigh Lafayette Giving Challenge (Project Champion: Marybeth Kuenne): Each year, Lehigh and Lafayette cosponsor the Lehigh Lafayette Giving Challenge, which pits the schools against one another in a fundraising challenge in which the school with the greatest number of donors during the campaign period wins. In an effort to support the existing marketing efforts, YAC has established this project to further spread the message through engaging personal and social networks. The project will establish a communication plan for its members and will seek to recruit and engage other alumni in their efforts to spread the word. In addition to supporting marketing for the challenge, the project will work with Lehigh staff to frame and communicate the results of the campaign, effectively providing feedback to Lehigh staff as to what information would be interesting for young alumni to know about the level of donations and characteristics of donors. Lehigh Gala 2015 (Project Champions: Rebecca Long and Andrew Woodward): As a part of the Sesquicentennial Celebration in 2015, Laura McGarry has challenge YAC to design a fundraising event in New York City that will reach many new donors and raise a significant donation amount for the university. The idea behind this event would be to engage young alumni where they live; with around 40% of Lehighs young alumni population, the New York City Metro area was the natural candidate for the event. Whereas the Young Alumni Reunion Weekend successfully engaged many of the same alumni each year, YAC is hopeful that in bringing events to where alumni live that we will increase overall young alumni engagement by increasing the number of people we are able to reach. This project team will create a proposal or set of proposals for events, effectively detailing the event planning and fundraising details for each event proposed. The goals for this project in the current year will be to have initial recommendations

completed and communicated to YAC and Lehigh staff for review and revision by February 2014 and to hold a final review with Lehigh staff by May 2014. Additional work may be in scope for the future in terms of supporting the creation of marketing content, but that lies outside the current scope of the purpose of this project. Young Alumni Spotlight (Project Champion: Claude Esposito): YAC will continue its efforts to introduce its members and other successful young alumni to Lehigh Staff, Faculty, and current students through young alumni spotlight articles written in the Brown and White. The goal of this project will be to identify alumni participants and coordinate the publication of an alumni spotlight article periodically throughout the year. Global Outreach (Project Champion: Vera Partem): Last year, the Alumni Benefits Committee started a project to compile contact information for alumni in cities throughout the world. The overall purpose of the contact network was for alumni moving to new locations to have an accessible network to engage when seeking for advice regarding their new work or living locales. The purpose of this project will be to complete the work that was started last year with the goal of standing up the network and communicating its existence to the overall young alumni population. Young Alumni Ambassadors Program (Project Champion: Joseph McLoughlin): As discussed above, the Young Alumni Ambassadors Program will be piloted in the fall of 2013 in hopes of determining the overall feasibility of the program as well as to compile best practices for its implementation. This project will focus on the creation of training material to empower all YAC members to be able to hold out reach meetings beginning in January 2014. Project Think Tank (Project Champion: Mike Hodsdon): With the new concept of cycling through projects rather than serving on standing committees for the year driving our new approach, YAC will have a group of volunteers charged with brainstorming additional project ideas for the council to ensure there is a continual list of projects to be addressed in the future. YAC members who have rolled off of a project upon its completion who are not seeking to work on any active projects will be a part of the Project Think Tank, brainstorming detailed proposals for future projects. The Vice President of Membership will oversee this project group. Collaboration: If there are ways in which YAC can collaborate with other volunteer organizations, please feel free to reach out to me to discuss. Email: jrm309@alum.lehigh.edu