The money lies among alumni

GRADUATES are being targeted as alma maters bid to boost their profiles.

APART from the annual begging letter and the dull magazine about campus life, alumni used to be ignored by universities.

But they have crept on to the radar of Australian tertiary institutions keen to boost their profiles and score business opportunities and fat donations from their connections.

There is a new awareness of alumni among university staff, who are instituting programs to encourage graduate contact with each other and today's undergraduates.

And next month, Group of Eight advancement officers will meet for the first time to talk about how to operate this dimension of their universities to maximum effect.

The meeting was the idea of University of Queensland director in the advancement office Carla Boeckman.

"They are alumni for a lot longer than they are undergraduates," Boeckman says of her target group.

"They want to reconnect with each other, they want to further their careers, they want to stay informed and involved in the university, and they want to support the university. Sometimes that means they want to donate or serve on committees."

Among UQ's plans is a networking website for alumni.

University of Adelaide's director of development (alumni) Robyn Brown remembers with horror the time, as recently as the mid-1990s, when graduates had to pay to belong to an alumni association.

"The first contact they had from the university after they left was it asking for money and if they didn't respond, you had lost them," Brown says.

At Adelaide, at least alumni have been elevated to first rank of importance: in the administrative restructure last year, vice-chancellor James McWha promoted Brown's bailiwick to a position where she reports directly to him, fortnightly. She estimates an alumni body in excess of 100,000, of which the university has contact details for about 55,000.

Also in July the university will launch an online community and issue interested parties with a membership card with benefits attached.

It's a smarter way to operate in the days when universities are crying poor and graduates are an obvious potential source of donations and bequests, but Brown says it is not just about money. "We need them to help us establish industry networks and consider mentoring students," she says.

To that end the university has established a student-industry program in which alumni can meet undergraduates in their field to discuss latest developments and whether, for example, they should consider postgraduate work immediately.

Another avenue was established last week when Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop and senator Natasha Stott Despoja cosied up for the launch of the university's Federal Parliamentary Alumni Network. Stott Despoja, who will retire from parliament in July, sits on the university's 13-member alumni advisory committee, which meets three times a year.

"I saw all the different alumni networks domestically and internationally and wondered why we didn't have one for members of parliament," she says.

There are more than 20 incumbent parliamentarians who attended the University of Adelaide, including federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, as well as independent senator-elect Nick Xenophon. Alumni also include former politicians, such as UN ambassador Robert Hill and Italian ambassador Amanda Vanstone.