Club Resources & Information

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Welcome Dedicated Illini Club Leaders

Foremost, the University of Illinois Alumni Association wants to thank you for all that your club does for our beloved University.   Your generosity with your time, talent, and treasure helps to keep our devoted alumni meaningfully connected to the University of Illinois through events, initiatives, and scholarship fundraising.  The UIAA is dedicated to helping your club reach more alumni by providing additional resources that we hope your club utilizes to maximize your impact within your region, your affinity group, or your identity group.   

Within this website, you will find more information on these specific resources and how to leverage them for your alumni club.   Furthermore, the UIAA included some additional resources and information related to event strategies, board governance, and other best practices to ensure that the UIAA is meeting the needs and goals of your club.   

Once again, thank you for all that you do for the University of Illinois and our Alumni Association.  We look forward to working with you to keep Illini everywhere connected to each other and our University.

Sincerely,
Tyler Gagai
Director, Alumni Clubs

Latest News & Announcements

Greetings Club Leaders,

The University of Illinois Alumni Association will be providing QR code postcards for the 2025 football season.   These QR code postcards are to be utilized for your football gamewatch events as they were last season.   In order to accommodate your club’s postcard needs for the 2025 football season, please submit your postcard request at your earliest convenience.   We want to ensure that we order enough postcards so that your club can provide these to your attendees at your gamewatch events.

Please note that there have been some updates to this program for the upcoming season. Full details and guidelines for this program are outlined on the form page that is linked above.

We hope that all of our Illini Clubs participate in this year’s QR code postcard program for your football gamewatch events.

Go Illini!

Greetings Club Leaders,

The University of Illinois Alumni Association has created a closed, private group on IlliniLink for our loyal Illini Club leaders to help facilitate discussion, connection, and the sharing of ideas and best practices. We highly encourage our club leaders to both join IllinkLink and actively participate in active discussion with your fellow club leaders.

If you already have an IlliniLink account created, you can access this discussion group by clicking here. If you need to create an IlliniLink account, you can do so here.

We have that you find this resource valuable! Thank you!!!

Greetings Club Leaders,

I-L-L!

We are looking forward to seeing you on June 27 2025 at 11:00 AM central time for our monthly Zoom meeting. If you need to access our Zoom meeting on June 27, you can join by clicking this link.

Beginning on July 1, 2024, the following adjustments will be made to the Clubs Program/Tier System for participating Illini Clubs:

– Main Quad level clubs will be eligible for up to $1500 in reimbursements annually. The maximum reimbursement amount per event will still be $750. To qualify for reimbursement, your club must submit the post-event evaluation form, an itemized receipt (showing what was paid for), and a list of attendees for the event (if your club accepted registration via Magnet or a gamewatch QR code, you do not need to submit an attendance list with your post-event report). Illini Union level clubs and Morrow Plots level clubs will still received $500 and $250 respectively in reimbursement support per year.

– All clubs (Main Quad, Illini Union, and Morrow Plots) will be eligible to receive a dues-free checking account and FEIN support from our partners at the University of Illinois Community Credit Union. Interested clubs will need apply for an FEIN from the IRS website and then work directly with the UICCU to open a checking account. Please note that an FEIN is required in order to open a club checking account with UICCU. Additionally, you will need an FEIN to create a Stripe account if your club wishes to utilize the paid event registration and paid membership features available through your club’s Magnet node.

– A Professional and Personal Development Constituent Journey event category has been added as a new event type for FY25. Please note that these events are separate from the Networking event category. PPD event types include but are not limited to: Webinars with a PPD focus; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion events; Mentorship; Workshops, and Skill Development.

– The QR code resource for gamewatch (football and men’s basketball) attendee sign-ins will be a postcard-based program for FY25. If your club wishes to participate in the program for football season, please complete this form by August 16, 2024. Participating clubs are encouraged to pass out postcards with the QR codes individually to gamewatch attendees for them to sign into the event. Individuals who sign-in will be entered into a weekly drawing for a prize pack courtesy of the UIAA and Illinois Athletics. A list of your gamewatch attendees will be sent to clubs on a weekly basis as the season progresses. If you plan to submit a request for reimbursement for a gamewatch event, there must be a confirmed attendance list for your gamewatch event.

We hope that these expanded resources will help your club with your engagement goals for the upcoming year. As always, thank you for your continued partnership!

The University of Illinois Alumni Association’s new clubs program (aka tier system) will launch on July 1, 2022.  Beginning on that date, domestic regional, affinity, and identity clubs may begin to participate in the tier system by following the established guidelines and leveraging the offered resources.  For those clubs who have already notified the UIAA of their intention to participate in this new clubs program, we thank you for being tremendous partners to our organization and we look forward to working with your club to expand your audience. 

For clubs who plan to participate, please notify Tyler Gagai at gagai@uillinois.edu of your club’s intention to participate.   Conversely, if your club has decided to not participate in this program, please notify Tyler of your club’s intention to opt-out.

If your club is located outside of the United States, please note that the UIAA is unable to extend tier system resources to your club at this time.  However, the UIAA does encourage international alumni clubs to utilize our events information resource as a means of gathering ideas for events that will reach different constituencies.

Thank you for everything that your club does for our beloved University. We look forward to working with you to connect Illini alumni from all walks of life.

Foremost, welcome to the Illini Club Leaders Resource Website!  Moving forward, this website will be updated regularly with announcements from the UIAA that may impact your club in addition to important information and news from the University.  We highly recommend that you bookmark this site as it will not be accessible from the main UIAA website. Any important updates will be highlighted as announcements (as you are reading now).   Please note announcements will include but not limited to the following:

  • Updates and changes to tier system resources and guidelines
  • University of Illinois athletic schedules as they become available (this includes all DIA sports)
  • Special announcements from the UIAA
  • Monthly UIAA Club Leaders Zoom Meeting information
  • Information related to major on-campus events, such as Homecoming

It is our intention that this website serves as a means of keeping all our clubs updated with timely and relevant information and helps strengthen your connection to the UIAA and the University of Illinois. We hope that your club utilizes this website on a regular basis.

Clubs Program (Tier System) Guidelines

The University of Illinois Alumni Association (UIAA) is proud to assist its alumni clubs through resources, guidelines, and expectations that we refer to as a “tier system” that is designed to maximize the engagement opportunities for the alumni in their region or their target alumni demographic.  Under this tier structured, alumni clubs are allocated resources and provided guidelines based on their club’s own goals, volunteer bandwidth, and alumni population.

Events

Events are the primary engagement opportunity for alumni clubs. Learn how to maximize the potential for robust attendance and smooth operations.

How to Guides

Learn more about how to start an Illini Alumni Club, disband/suspend operations of an alumni club, recruit new volunteers, and more.

Club Finances

The University of Illinois Alumni Association (UIAA) is here to support your alumni group’s goals and initiatives in a variety of ways.

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