Alumni Communication Program

As you have likely felt, an alumnus’ strongest connection to SigEp is often through his chapter. It’s where he built bonds of brotherly love, benefited from mentors and coaching, developed leadership skills and prepared for life after college.

Yet, too often, alumni disconnect from SigEp when they graduate. Through regular and relevant communication with alumni, AVCs can reengage them and build even stronger affinity over time by connecting them to what they care about most – their chapter. If an alumnus feels connected, he is more likely to share his time, talent and treasure with SigEp and your young brothers. Despite having more than 250,000 living alumni, only 1% of alumni serve as volunteers and less than 2% donate.

Offering New Communication Tools for Your AVC

SigEp’s new, chapter-based Alumni Communications Program will help your AVC regularly communicate with your alumni to share news and updates, and over time, engage them in meaningful ways to support the chapter you work with and its brothers.

How Your AVC Will Benefit

The Alumni Communications Program – in partnership with Pennington & Company, which specializes in alumni communication and fundraising – empowers AVCs to send regular chapter alumni newsletter communications and fundraising appeals.

This critical service will help AVCs and chapters:

Share regular and relevant news, updates and content with chapter alumni.
Foster volunteer recruitment and meaningful engagement.
Cultivate donors and facilitate future fundraising and stewardship/recognition efforts.
Gather and update alumni contact data and other information critical to meaningful engagement.

A Service that Supports Your AVC and Chapter

Through a partnership with Sigma Phi Epsilon, AVCs will work directly with Pennington & Company to craft and send (via mail and email) two newsletters, one alumni bio update and one appeal per year. You’ll work together to develop content that helps accomplish your AVC’s goals.

We know putting a regular newsletter together can be time consuming and daunting. SigEp Staff will support your AVC through providing:

A visually appealing, SigEp branded design template, customizable for your content.
One to two articles for inclusion in each newsletter around the impact of the SigEp experience. These will be written to be fully customizable to ensure they are chapter-specific!
Prospects and information for potential alumni spotlights to recognize notable alumni and cultivate potential donors.
A bank of articles your AVC is able to pull from if seeking additional content.
To ensure that alumni records are up-to-date and both your AVC and Pennington can focus on communication (not updating records), the SigEp HQ team will manage data inflows/outflows, as well as gift acknowledgement and receipting for donors. Data – contact records, donor information, and more – will be available to AVCs via mySigEp, providing a one-stop shop for AVCs to access their SigEp information.
Coaching for your AVC on how to leverage your newsletter and its articles on your chapter website and social media.

Fundraising through Communication

The annual appeal provides your AVC an opportunity to do annual fundraising among your alumni, building great habits for regular contributions and paving the way toward a significant capital campaign if that is what your AVC seeks.

Through the Alumni Communications Program, you can raise charitable dollars for one of these types of chapter-based funds at the SigEp Educational Foundation: (1) declining-balance Balanced Man Scholarship Fund, (2) a declining-balance SigEp Learning Community Fund, which can finance residential learning grants or local programming, or (3) an existing Chapter Leadership Endowment Fund.

Alumni will be encouraged to join chapter giving societies to annually/regularly contribute to chapter-specific funds.
SigEp HQ will ensure each gift is acknowledged and receipted, and giving data will be available to the AVC in mySigEp.
Once onboard, the AVC will also participate in the annual Founders Day of Giving effort by appointing a Chapter Captain who will send targeted email communication through mySigEp and via chapter/alumni social media channels. This effort supports the SigEp Educational Foundation’s annual fund, which directly supports critical undergraduate and volunteer participation in SigEp leadership programs.

Investment

The AVC would enter an annual agreement with Pennington & Co. for $2,000 per year, plus printing, postage costs. This provides an average of $4,000 savings per year if your AVC were to seek contracting a similar program.

We are able to offer this rate through an organization-wide partnership and subsidization from SigEp to invest in and elevate fundraising, volunteer recruitment, and alumni engagement.

Ready to Learn More?

Is your AVC interested in learning more or signing up for the program? Submit this brief interest form, and we’ll get right back to you to discuss the program!

Have additional questions? Reach out to our communications team, who is working closely with Pennington & Co. on this program, at communications@sigep.net.

Download the Alumni Communication Program Information Sheet

Recent Newsletter Examples

Check out recently sent newsletters from SigEp chapters enrolled in the program. The most recent 5 newsletters are listed below. Check back often for updated content and inspiration!

Frequently Asked Questions

Will we be working with Pennington or the Headquarters staff to produce our newsletters?

Your AVC will enter into an agreement with Pennington, and their expert team will work with you as you craft your newsletter and appeal content. They’ll be your primary point of contact. The Headquarters team will be supporting the program by providing Pennington and your AVC (via mySigEp).

Why send both mail and email newsletters?

This maximizes your reach! The average person receives 150+ emails a day but only 3 pieces of mail a day, so doing both means the newsletter is more likely to get read. Additionally, we find that SigEp (chapters and/or Headquarters) has better contact data for mailing addresses. The average chapter has around 66% of good addresses for their alumni but less than half of living alumni have good email addresses on record, meaning mailing the newsletter is crucial for maximum reach. This Alumni Communications Program is also built to help improve that data over time, too!

Our AVC keeps up a good list of alumni contacts. How do we ensure they receive the newsletter?

When you sign on, we will work with your AVC to incorporate any existing contact data that you’ve been keeping, and reconcile it with the data currently in mySigEp to make sure you have one, cohesive contact list that’s as accurate as possible. Further, if your AVC has worked with Pennington in the past, we’ll also consolidate the data they have on file. As you mail and email newsletters, bio updates, and fundraising appeals, we’ll continue to refine the data and make updates that alumni provide – consistently enhancing and expanding your contacts, as well as your potential reach with your alumni! Alumni contact information is fully accessible to your AVC in mySigEp.

If our AVC is already in a contract with Pennington & Company for alumni communication, how do we switch to this new program?

The Pennington staff is ready to help you! Your AVC can opt-in to this new program – and lower rate for services – by signing a new annual agreement with Pennington that reflects the terms mentioned above.

Why is annual fundraising a part of the communication program?

Alumni often say that they would have helped, “if only they’d been asked.” This helps you share the chapter’s needs and invite alumni to help you meet them, while developing the “habit” to contribute over time.

Why are these three funds selected as the options for chapter fundraising?

These funds give the breadth of options our AVCs typically fundraise for – scholarships, programming, housing and to an extent, operations support (see below). They also provide options for both immediate-use funds as well as endowments. These options provide the most flexibility of any Foundation funds, as well as support SigEp’s mission to “recruit the best men, provide them with the best experiences, and surround them in the best environments.”

Will all donations under this program be tax exempt? How will donors be thanked?

Yes. And every donor will receive a gift receipt and acknowledgement, as well as information at the beginning of the year to help in the preparation of taxes. Further, donors can see their contributions in real-time on mySigEp, and your AVC will have a list of donors/contributions to your fund, to recognize donors in subsequent newsletters and thank them personally.

What’s a “declining balance” fund?

It’s a fund that provides support for immediate needs. For example, the funds raised for the Balanced Man Scholarship could be used that year to provide scholarships to students.

Can we raise AVC operating dollars through the newsletters, or ask for the submission of "chapter alumni dues"?

We know AVC operating budgets include things like newsletter costs, programming support, property insurance, and housing-related expenses. Through this program, we recommend that you focus fundraising into one of the specified funds (BMS, SLC or Chapter Leadership Endowment), and then seek an annual operating grant to increase the AVC's revenue and its capacity to finance things like communications, programming, etc. Because of their broad use cases, annual operating grants can be funded by multiple foundation funds, including: RLC funds, SLC funds or CIF funds. This allows you to simplify things for donors/alumni -- they are able to give once, vs twice (donation and operating dues); their contribution can be tax deductible; and their contributions can be recognized together in a donor roll. This is also safer from a financial perspective, because there isn't a need for multiple checks to be sent to multiple places, which may also frustrate or confuse generous alumni.

Why is Founders Day of Giving participation part of this program?

Every year on Nov. 1, all of SigEp comes together to raise Annual Fund dollars to ensure that the critical leadership programs that all undergraduates can benefit from can continue to thrive and expand! These funds support the Balanced Man Program, SigEp Learning Communities, Carlson Leadership Academy, Ruck Leadership Institute, National Transition Retreat, Springboard, Grand Chapter Conclave, Tragos Quest to Greece, Life After College, and Career Coaching. Because the Alumni Communication Program is being subsidized by the National organization, your participation in Founders Day of Giving – We ask that you appoint a Chapter Captain and use provided communications tools to inspire your donors to give in the effort! This also provides an additional positive communications touchpoint for alumni.