We encourage all alumni to organise activities for alumni to be involved in. We’re happy to support as many activities and alumni as we have time for.

Below we have outlined what our goals, what support is available, and a list of ideas to get you started.

If you’d like to organise something from the list or have another idea that fits with the goals, please send the alumni relations office a brief outline and we will arrange a chat to discuss it further.

Alumni activity goals

• Be relevant, unique, exclusive, collective, valued and visionary
• Create a sense of belonging or offer credibility, support lifelong learning, contribute to career or business development, and/or leverage institutional connections

Support available from the IDS Alumni Relations Office

At a minimum the alumni relations office will work with organisers to promote activities, invite alumni to events (and other community members like prospective students and partners if relevant) and provide you with a briefing on the alumni network. If we have time, we can also arrange to send some printed literature relevant to your event and some IDS branded merchandise.

Expenses

For social only get-togethers IDS alumni relations office will only pay for IDS staff costs (i.e., food, drink, local travel, and accommodation if needed). Alumni are expected to pay for themselves. However, if you think that this could disadvantage alumni in your area, please contact us to discuss further.

Where an activity provides experiences for alumni and/or IDS that reflect our goals the alumni relations office can offer up to £500 for expenses. If we think an activity is eligible, we will ask you to complete a form. We expect all alumni activities that are given funding to provide a brief report on costs when the activity is completed. Please note that we have very limited funding for expenses for alumni activities, we expect to be able to fund 2 to 3 per financial year.

Ideas for activities

• Meet with IDS Researchers. Check Yellow Monday for travel information and we also let alumni ambassadors know when IDS Researchers are in their area and have time to connect with alumni. You can meet them socially (i.e. over dinner) or you could ask if they could be part of roundtable discussion or give a lecture
• Dissertation presentations from new graduates. An evening of quick presentations from newly graduated alumni on their masters dissertations
• Roundtable or lecture, invite a speaker(s) and get together to discuss a topic or theme important to you
• Fundraising event for the IDS Scholarship Fund
• Prospective student event, talk about IDS and inspire future alumni
• Networking event
• Joint IDS working paper
• Interview or blogpost series
• Any other activity that creates a sense of belonging or credibility, supports lifelong learning, contributes to career or professional development or helps leverage institutional connections

Have any idea? What next?

1. Send a brief outline of your idea to alumni relations office, including an estimated date/duration, and where it is happening (if relevant).  Up to 300 words is sufficient at this stage.
2. We’ll arrange an informal chat to discuss the idea in more detail and how we can help
3. If it is eligible, we will send you a form to complete to apply for expenses help for the activity