Love Your Alma Mater: Support Your Favorite City

One of the best ways to support your alma mater is to support its home.  Whether you graduated from a small college in a large town or a big college in a small town, share your appreciation of the place that educated you. There are several ways to support your alma mater and its home, even if you live a long distance away.

You can support your college town by visiting the town and supporting the local businesses. If your college has a football team, you can always visit during the Homecoming season. Instead of staying in a chain hotel, you can choose a locally owned bed and breakfast.  If you eat at local restaurants and you shop at locally owned shops, your dollars will help keep those businesses open for the college kids and the other citizens in this town.

You can also support your college town by wearing clothes or accessories with the town’s name. You can also wear your alma mater’s tee shirts and sweatshirts. When you wear clothing and accessories with the name of the city or of your college, people notice the big words and the colorful clothing. Your clothes can be conversation starters and you can actually tell other people about how great the college is and how great the town is, too.

 Most alma maters will ask their graduates for donations and they also ask their graduates to attend alumni parties. Alumni organizations do good things for current students, like provide scholarships and help with fees. Alumni organizations also often do good things for the community, too. They might sponsor little league teams or art shows. When you donate to your alumni organization, you are not only supporting your college, but you are financially supporting the future of the town.

Attending the alumni organization events is just as important as making donations. Many of the alumni events might require you to pay a small amount to cover the cost of the event. Everything that is left over after the event goes back to the organization. When you attend the events, current students and future students are able to see the pride that you have and they will want to feel the same thing, too.  If you become a regular part of the alumni events, you will be asked to attend more and more events and you will be invited to talk to future students about how great your alma mater is.

When you share your appreciation and pride for your college and college town, you help your college grow. You also help send people to the town because of your enthusiasm. Your positive energy helps spread more positive energy and all of that positive energy will come back to you several times over. If you have a skill to offer to the college, you might even be able to become employed by your alma mater. Many colleges offer benefit packages that include free or very low cost tuition, even for employees’ children. You then can develop a legacy by sending your children to the city that started it all  - the home of your alma mater.