by Jerry Tsai

For college and university theatre programs, instructing and training students to succeed in their professional endeavors is your number one objective. However, your relationships with these artists don’t—and shouldn’t—end with their graduation!

Maintaining connections with your program’s alumni provides a variety of benefits. When your graduates succeed, your program’s reputation improves, which can lead to wider recognition and more high-quality applications from prospective artists. Plus, engaging theatre alumni strengthens your college’s performing arts community, helping you create a better experience for your students.

To help your theatre program nurture alumni relationships, here are four strategies to consider:

1. Recognize Alumni Achievements
2. Create Networking Opportunities
3. Launch a Mentorship Initiative
4. Get Alumni Involved in Program Activities

Before you implement any of these strategies, get in touch with the alumni engagement coordinators at your university to make sure your efforts align with theirs. They may also provide insights into which initiatives will meet your program’s unique needs most effectively. Let’s get started!

1. Recognize Alumni Achievements

In addition to boosting your program’s image, recognizing your alumni’s successes shows that you value your relationships with them. Encourage alumni to share professional good news with you, and if you hear about their achievements through mutual connections, reach out to ask if they’re willing to be featured in your program’s communications.

Some of the best communication channels for recognizing alumni accomplishments include:

• Your program website. Create an “Alumni” page where you can feature success stories about your former students with their consent. Depending on how much time you have, these could take the form of short blurbs, longer blog posts, or even videos.
• Social media. Alumni shoutouts can be a great recurring addition to your program’s social media posting schedule. Plus, others who attended your university at the same time as the individual you’re highlighting can comment on the post, fostering connections between alumni as well as with your program.
• Email newsletters. If your program sends out a regular newsletter, dedicate a brief section each month to alumni highlights. To save space and increase engagement with your other communications, keep your newsletter blurbs short and link to a website feature or social media post so recipients can find out more.

In addition to providing public recognition, consider sending each alum a physical or digital greeting card to congratulate them on their achievements. This kind of personalized communication is often invaluable in maintaining individual relationships between alumni and your program.

2. Create Networking Opportunities

Networking can be extremely beneficial for your theatre program’s alumni. It not only helps them discover job and performance opportunities, but it also allows them to build relationships with other alumni in their field, further strengthening the performing arts community at your college.

When you think of creating spaces for networking, hosting events is probably the first thing that comes to mind. There are several types of networking events you could plan, including:

1. Dinners or socials at your university. If you go this route, schedule your event on a day when alumni are likely to be on campus, such as during homecoming weekend.
2. Meet-ups around the country. Find out what cities your program’s graduates often choose to live in, and select your meet-up locations accordingly to help them get to know other alumni who live nearby.
3. Virtual gatherings. Moving your networking events online makes it more convenient for alumni in a variety of locations to join, which can be particularly useful for graduates looking for opportunities in different cities.There are also online platforms you can leverage to continue your networking initiatives between events. Set up a message board on your program website, and invite alumni to join Facebook and LinkedIn groups where they can interact with other past students and faculty.

3. Start a Mentorship Initiative

Your theatre program can also engage alumni by fostering relationships between them and your current theatre students. One way to accomplish this is to launch an initiative for alumni to serve as volunteer mentors to current students.

Mentorship can either take place one-on-one or in small groups, depending on the number of interested participants. To gauge interest in the program and help match mentors with mentees, design two surveys. One survey should ask alumni about what activities they were involved in during college and what they’ve been doing since graduation, and the other should ask students about their college experiences so far and their future goals. Then, you can assign alumni to mentor students with similar interests.

Once your mentorship groups have been established, encourage mentors to reach out to their mentees and schedule virtual meetings with them. In these meetings, alumni can lean on their experiences to advise current students on job searching, internship opportunities, college and professional auditions, performance tips, and more.

4. Get Alumni Involved in Program Activities

The most direct way to nurture connections with alumni is to engage them in a wide variety of theatre program activities. Consider allowing alumni to get involved in both day-to-day operations and special events. For instance, you could:

• Invite your most dedicated alumni to participate in your program’s strategic planning discussions.
• Organize a reunion show that allows alumni from different graduating classes to collaborate and share their talents.
• Plan alumni-led webinars, panels, or discussion sessions to provide educational experiences for current students and other community members.

Activities like these not only engage alumni but also help advance your theatre program as a whole. Past graduates of your program can provide a unique perspective on the student experience and how they’ve been able to use the skills they learned since leaving school. This input can be helpful in determining your program’s strengths, identifying areas for improvement, and setting goals for the future.

The ideas in this guide are just four of the many possibilities your college theatre program could use to strengthen connections with its alumni. As you begin planning, review past alumni engagement efforts to see what has worked well and where you could improve. Remember to keep your overarching goals in mind, as well as the goals of your university, to build the strongest possible community around your theatre program.

Jerry Tsai is the President of Acceptd, a Togetherwork company that is the premier recruitment, application, and audition platform for the arts. He is passionate about serving the arts community and loves that art is a way to wind down and enjoy all that life has to offer.