Not a fundraising arm with an alumni label on it. A separate society, started by the trustees and then handed over — with its own money, its own decisions, and a real say in where the institution goes next.
Most school alumni associations are departments of the school wearing a different name. They raise money the school has already decided how to spend, and their members work that out quickly.
This one is built the other way round. The Society will be legally separate from The Learning Centre Trust, with its own finances and its own governance. It decides what it funds. If it thinks the Research Centre matters more than a building this year, that is its call to make, not ours.
Independence is not a courtesy we are extending. It is what makes the Society worth joining.
A body like this cannot start independent — someone has to constitute it. The intention is that the Trust does that once, and then steps back on a defined path rather than an indefinite one.
The Trust registers the Society, provides initial funding and administrative support, and convenes the first group of alumni members.
Office-bearers are elected from and by the alumni. The Trust's role reduces to a founding member's, and the Society begins deciding its own priorities.
The Society raises and holds its own funds and determines what it supports. Trust seed funding ends on a stated date rather than continuing quietly, so that independence is real rather than nominal.
You are the only people who know which parts of this education held up at university and at work, and which were wasted effort. The Research Centre's study of how students here learn is incomplete without the students who already left. That is not sentiment; it is the missing half of a decades-long dataset.
A seventeen-year-old deciding on a career learns more from an hour with someone doing the work than from a term of advice. You were that seventeen-year-old, which makes you better at it than a visiting speaker.
Laboratory access, internships, university contacts, collaborations. Alumni are at the IITs, IISc, CMI and ISI, and at universities abroad — that network is worth more to the next cohort than any single gift.
Through a Society you control, toward work you chose. Scholarships for students who could not otherwise come, the Research Centre's programmes, or something the Society decides matters more than either.
Within its own remit, the Society determines what it funds and how — scholarships, research programmes, facilities, or its own initiatives. Alumni money goes where alumni send it.
The Society is also intended to have a voice in the Trust's long-term direction, and this is the part still being worked out honestly. The Trust's Governing Body holds final authority over vision, academic standards and strategy under its published charter. A Society voice therefore has to be a defined right — a nominated seat, a formal consultative role at the annual review, or something else agreed in writing — rather than an understanding that depends on who happens to be in the room.
We would rather say that plainly now than promise influence that the governance structure does not yet permit.
A former student running a session or lab with current students.
The Society is being formed, not announced as finished. These are genuinely open.
If you want a say in how these are answered, the time to put your name down is now rather than after they are settled.
For alumni of CFAL, ELC and TLC School. No commitment attached — this is a list of people who want to be part of forming it.
Your details stay with the Society being formed and are never sold or shared.
office@cfalindia.com · +91 99005 20233
