Hi Mardi, we celebrated our 60th last year, and like you didn’t want the standard gala event. We focused on alumni and invited them to share their stories, which we then made into bug A2 boards around the College with their photos and stories. This inspired our existing students and staff.
We also developed a beautiful water garden area on the school grounds. We were going to do a sculpture, but that was a little too expensive.
In addition, we created a series of 3 videos on our various alumni and shared them across socials. Of course a section on the website highlighting the stories.
We also had an alumni as a guest speaker for IWD. Other events included trivia for our community, families/students and a staff-only celebration. The gala ball was canned due to expense and lack of resources to manage it. Perhaps the best part was our ’60th Anniversary Reunion’ with over 250 alumni. We had beautiful catering, displays, a program and a lovely and heartfelt liturgy.
I hope this helps with your ideas.
PS – I might add that I did want to have a guest speaker series across the year with our alumni but just ran out of manpower to make it happen. Good luck!
