The desire to perpetuate college friendships and to revive memories of college days was undoubtedly the underlying motive which first brought the former students together in these organizations; and not a few associations have progressed no farther in their activities. This is as true among Michigan alumni clubs as elsewhere. But as university officers came to recognize other possibilities in these associations, efforts were made to secure their co-operation in many matters and especially financial assistance, in the establishment of funds for various purposes, the erection of new buildings and providing for certain types of equipment which might not properly come from the ordinary channels of college and university income. The Michigan Union, Hill Auditorium, the women's dormitories, and the Clements Library of Americana perhaps best illustrate this type of alumni support. While in most cases the impetus toward this active co-operation and support on the part of the alumni came from the institution, in recent years the alumni have tended more and more to organize, not as an adjunct of the university administration, but as a body designed to formulate independent alumni opinion, and to make intelligent graduate sentiment really effective for the good of the institution. With this new phase of alumni activity came new elements--particularly the alumni secretary, maintained by the graduate body, the alumni journal, and the alumni council. This organization of college graduates is distinctly an American institution. There is little to correspond in Continental universities, where they do not even have a real equivalent to our word "alumni." In Great Britain, the graduates of the larger institutions have some voice in the policies of their universities and, in the case of the Scottish universities, they elect representatives on the governing body, as well as the chancellor and a representative in Parliament. But the lists of alumni are kept up only for what are practically political purposes, and such developments as local alumni clubs, or class reunions, are unknown; while there is ordinarily small effort made to secure financial support.