A Council Reimagined

The Young Alumni Council has undergone a deliberate transformation this year, one rooted in a single conviction: that a body meant to represent young alumni should be open, legible, and earned rather than handed down through habit. Below is an account of where the Council came from, why change felt necessary, and what we are building in its place.

For years, this Council functioned as a largely honorary body, convening twice annually with membership governed by a structure that, in retrospect, served form over function. Bylaws capped representation at two members per graduating class alongside fifteen at-large seats, which meant the Council often found itself recruiting based on class year rather than genuine fit or commitment. New members arrived through nomination — sometimes without fully understanding what they had agreed to, since someone else had put their name forward. And when it came time to vote, the body considered a single slate with little room for individual deliberation. The result was a Council that could be technically full while remaining, in practice, somewhat disconnected from the people it was meant to serve.

This year's Executive Council set out to change that, beginning with the bylaws themselves. In fall 2025, we replaced the nomination process with an open application, removed the class-year quota entirely, and — working alongside Furman's Alumni Engagement office — advertised the opportunity broadly across email and social channels so that any young alumnus could understand both the expectation of membership and how to put their name forward. We also formalized, for the first time, a clear mission: the Council exists as a bridge between Furman and its recent alumni, channeling their voices, talents, and resources to strengthen the University's mission while enriching engagement with both the undergraduate and postgraduate communities. That mission rests on three pillars — current student engagement, alumni engagement, and philanthropic giving — each tied directly to the University's broader goals for a thriving alumni community. The response validated the approach. Where the old nomination process typically yielded fifteen to twenty names, this year's open application drew eighty — a number that exceeded our goal of fifty and reflected, we believe, a process people could actually find and understand.

Evaluating eighty applications fairly required objectivity before judgment, so we used artificial intelligence to generate a composite score for every applicant, drawing on both their written application and giving and engagement data provided by the University's development office. That ranked list then went to our membership committee for human review, ensuring that data informed the decision without making it alone. The committee's recommendation — fifteen seats out of eighty applicants — went before the full Council, but the vote itself was individual; every member could review every applicant's full materials and vote his or her own conscience, regardless of the committee's recommendation. Some applicants outside the recommended fifteen still received votes in their favor, which is exactly what an honest vote should allow. Both the recommended and non-recommended lists carried by majority. Because we know what it costs someone to apply and wait, every applicant received a clear update on timeline, and those who weren't selected received a substantive response thanking them for their effort and pointing them toward other ways to stay engaged with the University.

We share all of this not to re-litigate a single decision, but because we believe the process deserves to be understood on its own terms. The Council today is a purely volunteer leadership body that meets monthly — one that cannot, and does not aim to, hold three hundred members, but one that intends to engage three hundred or more young alumni regularly in service of the University's broader mission. As part of that same commitment to transparency, we also worked with Alumni Engagement and Development to decouple Council membership from invitations to donor events like the Bell Tower Ball; going forward, those invitations follow publicized giving levels, not simply a seat at this Council's table. Some current Council members will not be invited next year on that basis alone, and many Young Benefactors who have never served on the Council will be. We see that not as a loss, but as proof that the Council exists to serve students and alumni, not to confer special privileges — and we hope that distinction, more than any single outcome, is what people take away from how we now do our work.

This effort is not finished and this Council will not be static — we intend to keep pushing toward greater transparency in how the Council operates, and we will continue updating our website so that these changes, and the reasoning behind them, remain visible to anyone who wants to understand them.

Warmly,

Young Alumni Council Executive Council