Build an alumni system around your batches, your chapters and your reunions.
An alumni association is held together by four people and a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has three versions, and the phone numbers in it stopped working around 2016.
Then a reunion is announced. Somebody starts a WhatsApp group, somebody else collects money into a personal account, and the treasurer spends a fortnight afterwards matching payments to names.
What an association needs is a member record that members keep current themselves, and one place where chapters, events, contributions and receipts all sit. That is the kind of system we build at GullySystem.
Associations and institutions we can build for.
A college association with a thousand members and a school network spread over four countries need different things. If you are a trade body or a professional institute rather than an alumni body, the associations and communities page fits better.
- Engineering college alumni associations
- Medical college alumni associations
- Management institute alumni bodies
- Arts and science college associations
- School alumni networks
- University alumni offices
- Polytechnic and ITI alumni bodies
- Departmental alumni chapters
- City and regional chapters
- Overseas chapters
- Batch groups organising a jubilee reunion
- Alumni charitable trusts
- Scholarship and endowment committees
- Institute placement and outreach cells
- Sports and hostel alumni groups
- Registered alumni societies
- Associations running their own building or facility
The modules, and what each one covers.
Nothing here is a fixed package. Each module is built, left out or changed to match how your organisation already works.
The member record
One record per alumnus, and the person it belongs to is the best placed to keep it right.
- Name, including the name used at college
- Year of admission and year of passing
- Course, branch and department
- Roll or register number
- Hostel and block
- Current city and country
- Current organisation and role
- Industry and expertise
- Phone, email and messaging preference
- Photograph, then and now
- Membership type and number
- Chapter
- Interests and willingness to help
Members update their own details through a login, which is the only way a directory stays alive after the first year.
Verification
Anybody can claim a batch. A directory is only worth something if the people in it really studied there.
- Self-registration with batch details
- Match against institute records where available
- Verification by a batch coordinator
- Verification by the committee
- Pending verifications
- Rejected registrations
- Duplicate records merged
- Deceased members recorded with respect
Matching against the institute’s own records depends on the institute sharing them. Where it will not, verification stays a human decision taken by your batch coordinators.
The directory
- Search by batch and branch
- Search by city or country
- Search by company or profession
- Search by name
- Batch-wise listing
- Chapter-wise listing
- Profile view
- Contact through the system
- Export limited to the committee
Each member decides what other members can see, and what stays private. A directory that shares a phone number without asking is the fastest way to lose the people you just signed up.
Batches
Alumni think in batches, not in departments. That is where the loyalty sits.
- Batch page
- Batch coordinator
- Members traced and untraced
- Batch photographs
- Batch news
- Batch fund
- Jubilee year approaching
- Batch-wise attendance at events
Chapters
City chapters run their own evenings and answer to the main body. Both facts have to be in the software.
- Chapter profile and area
- Chapter office bearers
- Members in the chapter
- Chapter events
- Chapter collections
- Chapter expenses
- Chapter reporting to the main body
- Permissions for chapter volunteers
- New chapter requests
Membership
- Life membership
- Annual membership
- Student and recent graduate category
- Honorary membership
- Membership number issued
- Fee received
- Receipt issued
- Renewal due
- Lapsed members
- Membership certificate or card
Events and reunions
- Proposal
- Committee approval
- Announcement
- Registration
- Payment
- Confirmation
- Attendance
- Photographs
- Accounts closed
- Annual general body meeting
- Batch reunions and jubilee years
- Chapter meet-ups
- Founder’s day and college day
- Guest lectures and webinars
- Sports meets
- Family days
Event registration
- Registration form per event
- Member and guest counts
- Spouse and children
- Meal preference
- Accommodation required
- Travel details
- Contribution slab chosen
- Payment status
- Badge and seating list
- Attendance marked at the gate
- Cancellations
The counts that matter to the caterer and to the hall are the ones the registration screen is built around.
Event finances
A reunion is a small business that runs for one evening, and it should close its books like one.
- Budget
- Registration income
- Sponsorship received
- Contributions towards the event
- Vendor quotations
- Vendor payments
- Expense with a bill attached
- Volunteer advances and settlement
- Surplus transferred to the association
- Event account statement
Donations and contributions
- Donation purpose or fund
- One-time and recurring contributions
- Pledge made
- Pledge honoured
- Anonymous contributions
- Contribution in kind
- Payment mode and reference
- Receipt issued
- Donor acknowledgement
- Contribution history per member
A pledge and a payment are two different records. Keeping them apart is what stops a fund total being announced before the money has arrived.
Funds and purposes
- General fund
- Corpus or endowment
- Scholarship fund
- Building or facility fund
- Batch-specific fund
- Emergency assistance fund
- Fund-wise balance
- Money received against each purpose
- Money spent against each purpose
Money given for one purpose being spent on another is how associations lose trust. Fund-wise balances make that visible before anybody notices it elsewhere.
Receipts and records for the auditor
- Receipt numbering
- Receipt format your auditor accepts
- Donor details as recorded
- Fund and purpose
- Mode of payment
- Reconciliation against the bank statement
- Year-wise donation register
- Statements for the audit
Whether your association may issue a tax exemption receipt depends on its own registration, and that is a matter for your committee and its auditor. The system prints what you are entitled to print.
Contributions from abroad
A large part of many alumni bodies lives outside India, and the money they send is treated differently.
- Contributions recorded separately by source country
- Designated account for such receipts
- Purpose recorded
- Reporting register
- Separate statements
Foreign contributions are governed by law and by whatever registration your association holds. The system keeps those receipts apart and reportable. Whether you may accept them at all is decided by your committee and its legal advice, not by us.
Scholarships and assistance
- Application
- Documents
- Committee review
- Selection
- Sanction
- Disbursement
- Progress report
- Renewal
- Student applicant record
- Financial need documents
- Academic record
- Amount sanctioned
- Donor or fund it comes from
- Payment record
- Continuing eligibility
- Thank-you note to the donor
Mentoring and networking
- Alumni willing to mentor
- Areas they can help with
- Student or junior alumnus requests
- Pairing
- Sessions held
- Feedback from both sides
- Mentors going quiet
- Success stories with permission
Jobs and referrals
- Job postings by alumni
- Internship offers
- Referral requests
- Applications through the network
- Employer alumni
- Company-wise alumni listing
- Posting expiry
- Postings the committee has approved
Postings are moderated before they appear, because an open board fills with recruitment spam within a month.
Communication
- Newsletter to all members
- Batch-wise message
- Chapter-wise message
- Event invitation and reminder
- Donation appeal
- Condolence message
- Achievement announcement
- Opt-out honoured
- Delivery and open records
Two things limit a reunion notice on WhatsApp. The provider has to approve the template, and a member who never asked to hear from you should not be on the list at all.
The committee
- Office bearers and their terms
- Executive committee members
- Sub-committees
- Meeting notices
- Agenda and minutes
- Resolutions
- Voting record
- Handover to the next committee
- Documents held by the association
A handover at the end of a term is where most associations lose their records. Everything sitting in one system is the whole point of this section.
Elections
- Eligible voters list
- Nominations
- Scrutiny
- Candidate profiles
- Voting window
- Online voting or in-person record
- Results
- Objections
- Audit trail of the poll
The rules for an election come from your bye-laws, and your bye-laws come from your registration. The software follows them and does not write them.
The member’s own login
- Update the profile
- Choose what is visible
- Search the directory
- Register for an event
- Pay membership or contribute
- Download receipts
- Offer to mentor
- Post a job
- See chapter news
- Contact the committee
The mobile application
Most alumni open a phone, not a laptop, and they open it once a month.
- Directory search
- Event registration
- Payments
- Notifications
- News and photographs
- Batch and chapter feeds
- Mentoring requests
- Profile update reminder
Archive and memory
The material that only this association has.
- Old photographs by year
- Event albums
- Magazines and newsletters
- Founding documents
- Institute history
- Notable alumni records
- Obituaries
- Contributions by members to the archive
What the secretary opens before a meeting
- Members verified and pending
- New registrations this month
- Membership renewals due
- Untraced batches
- Event registrations and collections
- Fund-wise balances
- Pledges not yet honoured
- Scholarships disbursed
- Chapter activity
- Members who have never attended anything
Roles and access
- President
- Secretary
- Treasurer
- Executive committee member
- Chapter coordinator
- Batch coordinator
- Event volunteer
- Institute liaison
- Auditor with read-only access
- Member
Integrations
- Payment gateway for fees and contributions
- Email and newsletter tools
- WhatsApp and SMS
- Accounting software
- The institute website
- Photo and document storage
- Video conferencing links for chapter meets
Contributions from overseas members need a payment route that accepts them, and that is decided by your bank and your registration rather than by the software.
One connected workflow, end to end.
Every stage below can sit in one system, so nobody re-enters what the last stage already captured.
- Registration
- Verification
- Membership
- Profile kept current
- Chapter allotted
- Event announced
- Registration and payment
- Attendance
- Contribution
- Receipt
- Fund allocation
- Report to the committee
- Handover
You do not have to replace everything at once.
Each phase is usable on its own, so the system earns its place before the next part is built.
- 1
Directory and members
Registration, verification, the member record and a login where alumni keep their own details current. Nothing else works until this does.
- 2
Chapters and events
Chapter pages, event registration, payments, attendance and the account each event closes with.
- 3
Money and records
Membership fees, contributions, funds by purpose, receipts and the statements your auditor asks for.
- 4
Network and reach
Mentoring, job referrals, the mobile application, the archive and communication to batches and chapters.
How a build actually runs.
- 01
Understand
We sit with the secretary and the treasurer, because between them they know where every record is.
- 02
Map
Members, batches, chapters, committees, funds and the approvals your bye-laws already require.
- 03
Design
Screens for a volunteer who has fifteen minutes on a Sunday, not for a full-time administrator.
- 04
Build
The directory and the member login first, because a stale list makes everything after it pointless.
- 05
Test
One batch and one chapter use it for a real event, registrations and money included.
- 06
Deploy
Existing lists are imported and de-duplicated, and members are invited to claim and correct their own records.
- 07
Improve
Mentoring, scholarships and the archive as the association finds the volunteers to run them.
Systems we can put together for you.
- Alumni directory platforms
- Alumni membership systems
- Chapter management software
- Event and reunion registration systems
- Donation and contribution platforms
- Receipt and fund accounting tools
- Scholarship application and review systems
- Mentoring and networking platforms
- Alumni job boards
- Newsletter and communication tools
- Alumni mobile applications
- Committee and meeting record systems
- Photo and document archives
- Multi-institution alumni platforms
Questions owners ask before starting.
What is alumni association software?
It is one system holding the member directory, chapters, events, membership fees, contributions and receipts, so an association stops running on three versions of a spreadsheet.
How do we keep the directory current?
By letting members maintain their own records through a login, and by prompting them once or twice a year. An association updating five thousand records by hand will never finish.
How do we know a registration is genuine?
Registrations can be checked against institute records where the institute shares them, and otherwise verified by a batch coordinator who remembers the face.
Will a member’s phone number be visible to everyone?
Only if the member allows it. Each person sets what other members can see, and the committee can set a floor below which nothing is shared.
Can members pay online?
Yes, for membership, event registration and contributions, with a receipt generated against the payment rather than typed later.
Can it issue tax exemption receipts?
It can print receipts in the format your auditor approves and keep the donation register behind them. Whether your association is entitled to issue such receipts depends on its own registration.
Can we accept contributions from alumni abroad?
Such contributions are governed by law and by whatever registration your association holds. Receipts from abroad can be kept separate and reportable here. Being allowed to accept them is another matter entirely.
Can chapters run their own events and accounts?
Yes, with their own volunteers, collections and expenses, and with reporting up to the main body so nothing is invisible at the annual meeting.
Can we run elections through it?
Yes, following the rules in your own bye-laws: eligible voters, nominations, scrutiny, a voting window and an audit trail.
Can alumni mentor students through the platform?
Yes. Alumni record what they can help with, requests are paired, and sessions are logged so the programme survives a change of committee.
Can we start with just the directory?
Yes, and most associations should. Get the member record and the login working, run one event through it, and add the rest afterwards.
What happens when the committee changes?
Roles are reassigned rather than accounts handed over, so records, funds and history stay with the association instead of leaving in somebody’s laptop.
Build an alumni system that outlives this committee.
An association is a list of people who once shared a hostel corridor and now share nothing except the wish to be found. Everything else follows from that list being right.
Send us your member register as it stands, with the chapters and the funds against it. Then we will say which list has to be cleaned before software touches it, and which reunion is better run on a sheet one more time.
Tell us how your alumni associations runs today.
We will tell you what can be digitised, what can be connected, what is worth automating, and what you should leave alone.
- No obligation
- We reply the same working day
- Your details stay private