What is a UW Alumni Chapter?

While the organization of chapters across the country and the world varies tremendously, all UW Alumni Chapters share in their purpose of providing a connection for alumni back to the University of Wisconsin. Through social and professional networking, public service and scholarship fundraising, these chapters encourage the continuous support of the University and foster association among graduates while working in tandem with the goals of the Wisconsin Alumni Association.

We currently have nearly 100 chapters in the U.S., and a growing number of overseas chapters. If there is not one in your area and you would like to try to start one, we encourage you to do so. We have found that the best way to begin is by searching on our online directory, located at www.uwalumni.com, by geography. This will tell you how many alumni are in your area. Start by sending a few of those people an email or by calling them to see if they too are interested. Once you have found a handful of people willing to help out in the early stages (we don't recommend going at this alone - it can quickly become a lot of work,) set a planning meeting and coordinate the details for your first event. Our office can assist you in pulling a mailing label list and can even print your first invitation, given we have twelve weeks lead-time. Full print guidelines are available upon request.

If there is not enough interest generated to actually form a chapter, you can still be listed on WAA's Web Site and publications as a contact, and hopefully later if there is enough interest, a chapter could be formed. As a contact one would be expected to:

• Reply promptly to inquiries about WAA and UW-Madison.
• Forward inquiries to WAA.
• Act as a liaison for WAA when officials from UW-Madison visit the country.
• Act as a liaison for in-country potential students, officials and researchers who may be interested in UW-Madison.
• Assist as a contact for any local alumni events.
• Keep WAA informed of any contact information changes

We suggest you keep your first event/activity simple and inexpensive. Receptions, picnics and networking opportunities that coincide with local events or festivals can be a good way to gather a diversity of people. These will probably require some up-front money and either the home of an alumnus or a rented venue. We suggest you charge people a bit over the predicted cost to cover the incidentals and the cost of printing and mailing an invitation for the next event.

At this first event, we suggest you have a couple people either walking around or seated at registration taking a survey. Find out if people are interested in doing a few events a year, what they are willing to pay to come to an event, what they most care about doing, and whether they would be willing to lead an event or the chapter. While many of our older and more established chapters follow a traditional President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer leadership pyramid, many of the newer chapters are responding to the interests of their members in providing one-time leadership opportunities. These groups work in more of a committee fashion and individuals are responsible for single events or pieces of correspondence. The leadership style your group chooses, as long as we have a primary contact person who can provide us with a telephone number and email address for correspondence, is your choice.

Once you have come up with a core group of people willing to serve as the chapter board, we suggest you sit down to draft a constitution and by-laws for the organization (we can provide examples and these need not be overly complex). Submit these documents to the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and we will then formally recognize the group under a one-year provisional status. After one year, we will issue a recommendation for chartering the chapter.

After you have submitted the constitution and by-laws to our office, we will move forward in creating a web site for your chapter and gaining access to a geographically segmented and trackable portion of the on-line database for you. Your chapter, pending you meet the requirements laid out in the chapter Leader Handbook, will be eligible for up to $8,000 in matching funds for local chapter scholarships from the UW Foundation and printing and mail services and reduced rates.

The updated, user-friendly Web manual is now available to download as PDF file. It features easy-to-read instructions and simple step-by-step how-to's for all your chapter web and email needs. If you have questions on how to update your chapter website, send out an email to alumni in your area, or post to the online event calendar this is a great resource to help get you started.

Please contact James Ellis at jellis@waastaff.com if you need to establish a username and password to log on to your chapter's admin site.