Happy new year, Brothers! We hope your 2014 is off to a great start.
Kevin and I wanted to give you a brief rundown of the Tau Sigma Alumni Association’s successes in 2013 and what our main priorities are for the coming year.
To start 2013, Kevin and I wanted to increase our presence in front of our alumni through email, mailings, and on the web. We accomplished this through quarterly email and snail mail blasts to update everyone on the status of the chapter, the house, member and alumni spotlights, births, deaths, and upcoming events at Tau Sigma. We also increased our presence and through social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, and even revived our Alumni webpage, TauSigmaAlumni.com.
We feel one of the most important strides we made as an Alumni Association was the fundraising effort we put forth to make our house at 2120 Lincoln Way a safer and more appealing place to live through the installation of a sprinkler system and ongoing repairs to the basement and chapter room.
For the year ahead we have three major priorities are 1) Increasing Alumni interaction, 2) Preparing for major renovations to the chapter house in 2015, and 3) Bring new volunteers into leadership positions within the Alumni Association and Housing Corporation.
Let me elaborate on these items. We have many ideas for increasing alumni interaction both amongst ourselves and with the active chapter. A preliminary idea would be to have an Active/Alumni Business Mixer where we would rent out a space in Des Moines or Ames and allow Alumni to share their professional experiences with undergraduates in their fields of study. We would also like to hold an alumni event in Ames for one of the first football games; more details to come on this event. Preparing for renovations to the chapter house will continue this year through our partnership with Pennington Corp. We are working on major fundraising strategies as well as plans for what we need to provide for the undergraduate members as the chapter size continues to grow and the house reaches live-in capacity. Finally, we need to bring new energy and talent into our ranks. Many of our current officers have given much of their time and talent to us over the years, and it’s time to honor their efforts by allowing them to transition their knowledge to a new generation of volunteers and leaders. We will be actively reaching out to new and old alumni in hopes of expanding our volunteer base, so don’t be surprised if you get a call from us!
We look forward to the year ahead for Tau Sigma undergraduates and Alumni. As always, if there is anything Kevin and I can improve on, please reach out to us. We are always looking for new ideas and ways we can improve our process. If you have any suggestions for alumni who would be a good fit for an Alumni Association or Housing Corporation leadership role, we would appreciate the recommendation.
Yours in _kai_,
Cameron Vens – T∑ 1774
Kevin Friedman – T∑ 1738