The Process

The University of Cincinnati Alumni Association was formed in 1907 when a small but passionate group of alumni started talking about the immense potential of the university, which had already gone through many changes in its history. The group believed that potential could be better realized with a formalized, coordinated effort to keep alumni engaged in the life of their university. They shared their thinking with then UC President Charles Dabney, who greeted with enthusiasm the idea of a University of Cincinnati Alumni Association.

Through its first hundred years, the UC Alumni Association grew in stature, finding a variety of ways to benefit those it served. As the organization celebrated its centennial in 2007, fittingly it found itself in its greatest time of introspection and strategic self-assessment, spurred by the desire to more fully align its work with the changing wants and needs of its alumni constituency as well as the rapidly evolving university itself.

Similar to what happened 100 years earlier, a small but passionate group of alumni began to discuss ways to refocus the organization’s work, to broaden and strengthen its value proposition, and to make the Alumni Association more robust and sustainable as a unique institutional advancement partner in the UC community.

These earnest conversations soon laid out a framework and process for the months ahead:

• The thinking of the UC Alumni Association and UC Foundation staff and volunteer leadership teams was engaged.
  
  

• Transparency and inclusion became a basis for how the work was planned and carried out.
  
  
• The process expanded to include dozens of alumni, students, staff and friends of the university.
  
  
• New perspectives were incorporated from research conducted with alumni and students.
  
  
• The arrival of a new UC Alumni Association executive director was assimilated.
  
  
• A necessary balance was maintained between the need for thoughtful deliberation and organizational urgency.

In 2008, this new strategic plan emerged, ready to lift engagement within the family of UC alumni to a new level.