Build an alumni system around your batches, your chapters and your reunions.
An alumni association usually runs on a small committee and a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet exists in several versions, and many of its phone numbers are out of date.
When a reunion is announced, registrations arrive over WhatsApp and money arrives in personal accounts. The treasurer then matches payments to names after the event.
An association needs a member record that members keep current themselves. It also needs one place for chapters, events, contributions and receipts. GullySystem designs that as one system.
Associations and institutions we can build for.
A college association with a thousand members and a school network across four countries need different things. A trade body or professional institute fits the associations and communities page 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 technical institute 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 residence hall 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, kept current by the alumnus.
- Name, including the name used at college
- Year of admission and year of passing
- Course, branch and department
- Roll or register number
- Residence hall or hostel
- 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 surest way to keep a directory alive after the first year.
Verification
A directory is useful only if its members studied at the institute. Claims to a batch are verified.
- 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, and the committee can set a minimum below which nothing is shared.
Batches
Alumni identify with their batch more than their department. Batches are the main grouping.
- 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 events and report to the main body. Both are recorded 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
Each event keeps its own account of registrations, expenses and balance, closed with a statement the committee can review at the next meeting.
- 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
Fund-wise balances show when money given for one purpose is used for another.
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
Many alumni live abroad, and money sent from another country is often 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.
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
Records stay in one system when the committee changes. Roles, funds and history are handed on through role changes, not copied between files.
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 use a phone, and use it occasionally.
- 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.
What you bring, and when.
The build moves at the speed of the answers. These are the things we ask for, in the order we ask.
- 01
Your current member sheet and event accounts
Share the latest batch directory, reunion registration lists and the treasurer’s receipt book. Untidy is fine. They tell us what the committee really tracks.
- 02
A secretary and a treasurer
The secretary answers for members and chapters. The treasurer answers for funds and receipts. When they disagree on a rule, the president decides.
- 03
Fee categories and fund names
The committee fixes membership categories, fund purposes and the receipt wording your auditor accepts. Batch coordinators look at directory screens as they appear. Their corrections shape verification.
- 04
Old records and members’ consent
Older member data moves across only when the committee is comfortable with how it was collected. The secretary approves the import. Invitations follow.
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. Updating thousands of records by hand is not practical.
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.
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.
Is it possible to 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. Whether the association may accept them is a separate legal question.
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.
Should we start with just the directory?
Yes. Start with the member record and the login, run one event through it, and add the rest afterwards.
What happens when the committee changes?
Roles are reassigned to the new office bearers, so records, funds and history stay with the association.
Build an alumni system that outlives the committee.
An association is a list of people who once shared a campus and want to be found. Everything else depends on that list being correct.
Send the member register as it stands, with the chapters and the funds against it. The written reply names the list that needs cleaning first.
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.
What happens after you share your requirements
- A senior engineer reads your answers. Nobody phones first.
- Within one business day you get a written note: what we understood, what we would start with, and the questions we still have.
- If it fits, a proposal follows with the order of work, what we need from you and what you receive at each step.
- No call is booked and nothing is paid until you have read the note. Your details stay with us.
Start with your requirements
Seven short steps that tell us what you need. A senior engineer reads them before anyone gets in touch.
Share your requirements