Western Engaged Overview

With more than 163,000 alumni worldwide, Western Washington University has an incredible opportunity to build a strong and diverse community of graduates who can help support the future success of their alma mater. But we need more frequent and high value ways for them to get involved beyond donating and becoming a WWU Alumni Association member. We need to develop activities to continue to deepen their connections to the campus community.

We need to understand how alumni want to connect and the value they see in staying engaged while being careful to not just ask for what we as a university need from them, but rather provide them what they want. 

To that end, we are flipping the engagement model on its head, with a focus on providing resources and assistance to help faculty, staff, and student leaders build the connections with Western alumni. Because of Western’s unique culture most alumni have an affinity not to the University, but rather the specific departments, programs, and friends where they spent their time at Western.

This Engagement Kit is a living tool that captures best practices and makes it easy to share knowledge across campus about how to engage alumni. The goal of this Kit is to make it easier and safer for everyone to engage alumni by providing guides and a community of practice.

We recommend using the Kit in whatever order you feel best suits the unique needs of your alumni and program. However, we do find that many people enjoy approaching things in the following order:

• Western Engaged FAQ
• Western Engaged Vision
• Get an Alumni Appreciation Kit
• Form an Alumni Engagement Committee
• Build an active Facebook Group
• Host an Alumni Event
• Host a virtual event/webinar
• Create and share crowdfunding projects
• Establish an Alumni Mentorship program
• Managing the Mentoring Relationship
• Connecting Students to Alumni Mentors
• Mentors Handbook example
• Mentoring Agreement sample
• Sample Event Budget Worksheet
• Restaurants, Breweries, and Vendors