Yale Hosts Ivy Plus Conference
by Nory Babbitt
Starting on Tuesday, June 21, 2005, the AYA was pleased to host our Ivy League peers for a three-day conference on alumni relations in New Haven. “Ivy Plus,” as it is commonly known, is a coming together of the alumni relations staffs of the Ivy League schools, plus MIT and Stanford. The hosting responsibilities rotate among the schools, and Yale has the pleasure every ten years.
The purpose of the conference is two-fold: to have the opportunity to meet with peers who do the same job as we do and to trade best practices. Each school also tries to include some plenary sessions that will add to the overall educational/training experience. The goal? Better service to our alumni through benchmarking with our sister institutions. A volunteer committee of AYA staff members spent several months planning the Ivy Plus program, lining up panels and plenary speakers, making arrangements with caterers, and handling registrations via a special Ivy Plus website.
The conference began with a welcome reception at Rose Alumni House to meet and reconnect; and attendees were encouraged to sample the many fine restaurants in New Haven for dinner. The next morning, we gathered in Linsley Chittenden Hall for a welcome by our Executive Director, Jeff Brenzel. The 100 participants present represented areas all familiar to the AYA: Classes and Reunion Programming, Clubs and Regional Programming, Educational Seminars and Travel, On-line Services, Graduate and Professional Schools, Shared Interest Groups, and Student Programming. The morning was spent in breakout groups by constituencies, with AYA staff leading the discussions. It was important to the AYA to devote this first day of sessions to constituencies so that participants would be able to identify more easily those peers who were working in their same area of interest. The group was treated to a barbeque on the Old Campus for lunch, complete with Ivy Plus Frisbees, and then back to LC for afternoon breakouts. For dinner that night, the group gathered in Berkeley College. After a welcome by Vice President and Secretary Linda Lorimer, and Master John Rogers, our guests were served an “International Buffet” by Yale Catering. They loved being in the residential college setting, and gave a standing ovation to the Dining Hall staff for their efforts.
For our second day of meetings, we conducted a series of plenary sessions. The morning was kicked off by a presentation by Yale professor Barry Nalebuff speaking about his book, Why Not? This presentation has been used successfully with Yale volunteers and alumni at both Assembly and reunions. For this audience, Professor Nalebuff put more of an Ivy League/alumni relations spin on his presentation. The participants broke out into discussion groups and then came back to present their ideas. As those who have heard Professor Nalebuff know, the presentation generated a lot of discussion which carried right into our lunch. What a treat it was for our colleagues to be able to dine at “the tables down at Mory’s!”
After lunch, Joe Zappalla, Director of Marketing and Communications for Cornell's Division of Alumni Affairs and Development, spoke to the group about how we market our institutions and alumni programming. Joe’s thoughtful presentation made us all think hard about the consistency of our messages and our overall communications plans. This is so critical at a time when our alumni are receiving so many messages from a variety of sources. Laura Freebairn-Smith, Director of Yale’s Organization and Development Learning Center, then moderated a lively panel made up of colleagues from Stanford, Penn and Cornell about working with alumni volunteers. Each of the panelists gave a brief statement, and then took questions from the audience. Some free time at the end of the afternoon allowed participants to take tours of the Yale Campus and explore New Haven. A shoreline dinner at the Yale golf course was a wonderful end to a beautiful day. Once the lobster bibs went on, the cameras came out! The buzz in the restaurant made it clear to all of us that our peers were having a wonderful time connecting with each other.
Friday morning brought our conference to a close with a session on “True or False: There is no such thing as a bad volunteer.” The answer was overwhelmingly “True” as each school in turn affirmed how important our volunteer leaders are to our work and our alumni relations missions. Seasoned staff alumni relations professionals and young newcomers alike responded to comments made by the various Executive Directors with a spirited discussion, and headed home with a renewed sense of purpose.