Alumni events are a fun, nostalgic celebration of the good old days — and the perfect way for graduates to develop a vast network. Behind the scenes, though, it’s alumni relations and engagement professionals who make the magic happen. If planning these types of events is part of your job, you know better than most how challenging they can be. 

You’re hosting multiple gatherings per month, often in unfamiliar cities, and have a variety of tastes and palates to accommodate — all on a predetermined (and often strict) budget. How do you create events that people actually want to attend and boost alumni engagement?

Good food is one of the secrets. It works for all kinds of events — from upscale fundraising galas to relaxed social mixers.

The other secret is that finding great catering wherever your event happens to be doesn’t need to be hard. Forget negotiating with vendors and hunting down receipts. With ezCater, you can serve a memorable feast without the stress of traditional catering services. 

How ezCater makes catering for alumni events easier

Rice University feeds hungry business graduate students at events on campus with the help of ezCater. And they’re not the only ones. Here’s why ezCater is a go-to partner for colleges and schools all over the United States.

1. Access to a nationwide network of caterers

If you’re hosting the event in a new city, far from your go-to partners, you might not know any reliable caterers. Even when you’re close to home, campus catering services may not always suit your event’s needs. For example, they may only offer casual dining options when what you really want is gourmet spreads that wow guests at a donor dinner.

Yes, sourcing food is a huge challenge — and it’s even harder when you need allergen-free and dietary restriction-friendly meals. You could spend hours researching online suggestions, menus, and reviews. That’s time you probably don’t have in your busy schedule.

ezCater gets you out of this bind — quickly. We partner with more than 100,000 national and local restaurants from all over the country. Simply enter your event address and browse what’s available nearby.

Don’t have a lot of free time? That’s okay, filters will narrow down the results. For example, if you want to serve a Mexican feast that is vegan-friendly, combine the Cuisine and Dietary Options filters. Now, instead of sorting through hundreds of results, you’ll get a list of nearby caterers that meet your needs — within a minute or two.

2. Seamless tax-exempt ordering process

Anyone who orders catering for alumni engagement events regularly knows these purchases are tax-exempt. Most campus food services know it too, which is why they’re so convenient. But if you’re ordering from an off-campus restaurant, chances are the staff doesn’t.

Suddenly, explaining your institution’s tax-exempt status to caterers becomes your responsibility. You will also have to show your tax-exempt certificate and wait for the restaurant to confirm it. Now repeat that tedious process each time you place a new order with an off-campus caterer. It’s time consuming, to say the least. 

Fortunately, ezCater came up with a one-and-done system. When you create your institutional account, you can upload your tax-exempt certificate. Then, we apply it to all future orders.

That’s it. No more tax talk, no more wasted time on the phone, and no more billing mistakes.

3. Easier expense management

Keeping track of receipts can be a pain for alumni engagement pros, too. If you’re dealing with just a couple of pieces of paper, that’s usually not a big problem. But after hosting multiple events and ordering from dozens of caterers, they start to pile up. After a while, you may not remember where each receipt even came from. And the worst part? Losing them makes expense reporting and compliance more challenging.

If you’ve ever lost a few receipts, you know this better than anyone. But here’s the good news: digital receipts make your life easier. And with ezCater, we keep all your receipts neatly organized in your account dashboard — so you can access them instantly, from anywhere. This means no more loose paper and no more guessing what that mystery charge was for. 

Besides reducing paper waste and clutter, switching to digital receipts eases your mental load, too. If you’re not stressing about them going missing, you can focus on more important things, like coming up with crowd-pleasing ideas for alumni events. Or, better yet, relax after a busy day. 

4. Customized reporting 

Embracing digital records is a good move. But why stop there when there are more challenges you could solve?

Let’s consider expense reporting. It’s not the definition of fun for most alumni relations professionals. Go through old paper invoices. Split them into multiple piles — one for each department on campus. Enter them, one by one, into separate expense-tracking logs. Check everything for errors.

Those are a lot of time-consuming steps. Even the tech-savvy pros who get digital receipts have their work cut out for them. Streamlining this process will save you hours — and it’s easier than you may think with ezCater.

Here’s how. First, you create a billing code for each department, like A for Athletics and M and Music. Then, you attach the corresponding code to your order when you place it.

Voilà, your food spend data is all neatly organized. Now, you can quickly pull customized expense reports from your dashboard. Finally, you can get a better understanding of how each department is spending its budget. 

5. Caterers that can accommodate last-minute changes

Food-ordering professionals know that no matter how well you plan an event, something can always go wrong. If you don’t have a backup plan, that can be stressful. 

What can you do about supply chain issues, last-minute venue changes, and unexpected special dietary requests? Especially if you’re only a day or two out from the alumni event. You can’t just let guests go hungry, so you’re forced to improvise. Maybe you place frantic calls to every vendor within a 50-mile radius, or maybe you dart to a restaurant supply store to throw together an amateur catering spread yourself.

Those are all valid options. But chances are you’ll quickly feel exhausted and burnt out. Having the flexibility to tweak your order last minute is a far better alternative. When you order through ezCater, you can request changes directly from your account dashboard up until the day before the event.

If that still doesn’t solve your problem, our 24/7 customer support team will. They go above and beyond to help you get your plans back on track.

Improve alumni engagement with catering services powered by ezCater

Whether you’re hosting an outdoor cocktail hour on campus or a networking weekend on the road, getting the catering right will make your reunion a success. Ready to start improving alumni engagement and attendance the easy way? Learn more about ezCater’s corporate solutions for colleges and universities today.

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