Alumni pledge to serve alma mater
Raising funds for scholarships, faculty bonus and expansion.
The alumni associations at premier B-schools and engineering institutes are going beyond handing out an annual donation cheque to their alma mater. They are contributing at every level and helping the institutes build their brand, both nationally and internationally.
“It’s a moral calling towards our alma mater. We are together to support our institute. It’s our responsibility to see that our institute stays on top,” said Rakesh Godhwani, head, IIM Bangalore, alumni association.
Godhwani, who joined IIM-B three years ago, said the B-school has put in a lot of effort to institutionalise alumni involvement. “We made a professional secretariat at the office by making the alumni association a legal entity. Earlier, It was a problem reaching out to the alumni with their various yahoo and google groups,” said Godhwani.
Every year, IIM-B is increasing its alumni base by 1,000 students. From 1,500 members in 2007 the institute now has over 5,500 members.
The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has set a target of raising Rs 250 crore by the end of next year through alumni contributions. According to officials, the premier B-school is aiming not only to replenish its dwindling corpus, but being self-sufficient and attract better faculty and research.
So far, IIM-A has raised Rs 18 crore through alumni contributions. One of the former students of the 1989 batch has donated Rs 2.3 crore. The alumni includes some prominent names like Rasesh Shah, chairman of Edelweiss, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder of Naukri.com, Nirmal Jain, chief executive officer of India Infoline and Rahul Bhasin, managing partner for Bearing Private Equity.
At Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) in Jamshedpur, alumni members are helping the institute decide on how to use their financial contributions. They have decided to use the funds either for student scholarships, recruiting international faculty or improving the infrastructure.
The institute has also developed an interactive alumni portal that has already seen around 5,000 registrations. XLRI has developed a database to keep track of the alumni and allow better interaction between students and the alumni members.
“Both B-schools and the alumni are now realising the need to bridge the gap further. Even at XLRI, we are involving alumni more and more to improve various areas of the institute. For instance, we have created an ‘XLRI Endowment Fund’ that is aimed at alumni contributions. Most of the members on the board of the endowment fund are XLRI alumni,” said E Abraham, director, XLRI Jamshedpur.
The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) has found an innovative way to increase alumni participation on the campus — a new fund-raising drive called ‘Give one for IIT-Bombay’. Every alumnus, who is part of the voluntary movement, pledges one per cent of his or her salary to IIT-B every month.
So far, more than 735 students out of the 1,000 in the graduating class of 2010 have signed up for the initiative.
An IIT-B graduate earns an average annual salary of Rs 7 lakh. This means the institute will be able to generate over Rs 51 lakh (Rs 7,000 per student per annum) when these students start contributing in the first year.
“The aim is to engage our alumni early. We would be using the funds to meet various needs like infrastructure, joining bonus for faculty, green initiatives on the campus or benevolent fund for the faculty members and IIT-B staff,” Bakul Desai, ideator, IIT Bombay Alumni Association, told Business Standard.
All these institutes have decided to keep an account of the contributing members and provide them a timely update on how the funds are being used. The former students can suggest to the association if they wish to divert the fund to a specific venture on the campus.