JOHN KOVACH High schools miss opportunity

Many high schools don't have comprehensive and effective alumni associations that they can tap into for academic and athletic projects.
As a consequence, they are missing out on a lot of potential financial assistance and other valuable resources that can come from alumni looking to give back to their alma maters.
Most alumni would like to re-establish closer ties to their high schools so that they can know what the schools need to succeed, and how they can become part of the process by providing funding to establish lasting legacies.
Alumni are great resources for college scholarship money, funds for special projects like a new chemistry or physics laboratory, band room, auditorium, athletic facilities, press boxes and a variety of other school projects.
They also can provide mature and valuable input, leadership and expertise to influence the positive directions of the schools.
In short, alumni want to reconnect and share some of their success with their high schools, which helped to form their roots and launch their careers.
But high schools have to reach out to alumni to establish close links that ensure the best chance of a mutually-beneficial relationships.
Create alumni association
To do this, a high school needs to establish an independent alumni association that is funded by alumni, directed by an alumni committee and operated by a salaried coordinator who is accountable to the alumni committee.
This innovation will require an interested alumnus or a nucleus of dedicated alumni to get involved to launch the project, and create an initial funding mechanism and plan a perpetual funding strategy.
It also is recommended that the coordinator be an alumnus.
The alumni association can be provided with its own link on the school's web site, where it can publish alumni-related information and a printable newsletter.
The alumni committee and the coordinator should be responsible for creating and maintaining an updated data base of all graduates on a yearly basis that can be published on an alumni link, where alumni also will be invited to add their names and other information to the lists.
The alumni link also can list upcoming class reunions, other alumni events, school projects that seek alumni funding and other assistance and an alumni chat board where alumni across the globe can converse and offer suggestions and ideas for school and alumni projects.
The coordinator can work closely with the high school journalism, computer and website-design departments and classes and teachers to create and maintain the alumni newsletter, which would be updated daily and include both high school and alumni news and all information from the alumni link.
Teachers, students can help
Additional alumni funds also can be provided to pay students and teachers who work on the alumni link and newsletter. Or the school can arrange that teachers and students donate their services in return for valuable website and journalism experience that can be considered part of an internship program or class assignments.
Such an alumni newsletter then can be viewed and printed out by alumni all across the globe to make them again part of their alma mater and draw them closer to it.
Officers of class reunions will be an valuable resource of information about alumni to help the keep the data base updated. A list of all class reunions and class officers can be compiled to maintain contacts and an updated data base.
Before you know it, every interested graduate of the school and his or her e-mail address will be listed by graduation-class years on the website, and the list will be expanded as the years go by.
Plant a seed, watch it grow
It's like planting an alumni seed and watching the funding tree grow into a rich endowment.
Because as the newsletter and requests go out daily, the connections will follow.
For example:
The newsletter announces: "We need a new physics lab that will cost $100,000. Naming rights are available."
An alumnus may respond: "Yes, I would like to give back to my school $100,000 to fund the new physics lab" -- Dr. John Smith, a 1950 graduate who read the new newsletter request.
Or, the newsletter announces: "We need $20,000 to build a new high-technology athletic press box to replace our original, old chicken-coop, barn-like structure."
An alumnus may respond: "Yes, you got it" -- Atty. Steve Jones, an all-state football center and a 1962 graduate who also read the new newsletter.
The requests and the responses can go on and on.
So, alumni and high schools, just give it a try it. It works for colleges. Most colleges have alumni associations. So it's definitely worth a shot. It might work.
No, in fact it will work.
kovach@vindy.com