The Alumni Association eliminated membership dues for annual and lifetime members to foster permanent and lifelong connections to NC State for all alumni. 

Reshunda Mahone, associate vice chancellor for Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving at the Alumni Association, said the association’s work ensures a continued sense of belonging for those who are no longer on campus every day.

“We’re responsible for making sure that alumni, friends, parents, students, faculty, staff — the entire NC State community — is not alone,” Mahone said. “We’re making sure that everyone has that connection and relationship with the institution.” 

Until July 1, the Alumni Association collected dues for all members. At $50 for a one-year individual membership and $950 for a lifetime membership, joining the association came with a price. 

“We’re talking about only 15,000 people roughly, give or take, out of 292,000 alumni, that actually were dues-paying members,” Mahone said. “So you can see the gap.” 

Mahone said the gap between the number of total alumni and the number of members in the Alumni Association motivated the organization to consider dropping dues. 

“It’s hard to still put a dollar value on the fact that we’re only supporting and engaging less than 10% of our alumni population,” Mahone said. “So as someone who believes in NC State, that, to me, is a huge opportunity cost.”

The Alumni Association decided engagement was more important than revenue, leading to its decision to strike down membership dues. 

“If we’re only focused on numbers, we’re leaving a lot of alumni — not to mention friends, parents, family — off from a relationship with the institution,” Mahone said. “That’s one of the reasons why we needed to think about a different strategy, one that hopefully gets us closer aligned to our mission.”

Mahone said the decision to drop fees came with significant support. 

“There was a lot of decision-making involved in the financing and funding, and I am proud to say that we have a University with leadership from Chancellor Woodson … that is 100% supportive of the idea that we want to grow that 7% to 100% of our alum being engaged, not just those who are dues-paying members,” Mahone said.

Mahone said that while previous due-requiring memberships are no longer offered, those who currently hold memberships with the Alumni Association will have annual member’s benefits honored until expiration or will be included in an engagement-focused affinity group for lifetime members. 

The Alumni Association also hopes that dropping dues will boost engagement with current students. Anil Gordon, a second-year studying political science and director of engagement and outreach for Student Government, said having alumni connections is valuable for current students. 

“Engaging with alumni allows you to start relationships early, which I think that’s something that’s really crucial,” Gordon said. “If you’re waiting until senior year, you might miss out on advice, opportunities and just the ability to learn from the mistakes or lessons that alumni might have learned through their time in college.” 

To aid in bridging the gap between students and alumni, Gordon said that one of his main initiatives for the year is to build up a database of alumni that would be accessible to all students and graduates. 

“This was part of a larger task set forth by [Timothy] Reid and [Allison] Markert’s campaign initiative,” Gordon said. “What the end result would hopefully look like would be the University adopting a software that would allow students to use the database and access information about alumni through specific queries.” 

Gordon said he hopes this will benefit students and aid the Alumni Association’s mission to connect and engage with the Pack. 

“I think this is something that would definitely benefit students at NC State, as well as keep alumni engaged and involved with our student base, allowing them to feel like they’re able to give back to the community in a relatively easy way,” Gordon said. 

More information on the Alumni Association and its membership opportunities can be found on the Alumni Association’s website.