Notre Dame Alumni Club of San Francisco

This club is building critical mass, and in general a great group to meet up with, volunteer with and, being Notre Dame, watch football with. Compared to other ND alumni clubs around the country that I’ve been part of, this club is definitely on the smaller side. On the plus side, this means you get to meet and know people when you show up to an event.
The game watches can be spotty, depending on opponent and location. But getting up for a 9am PT game and seeing the bar full of blue, gold and green brings a warm feeling. And it’s nice to see game watches for hockey and women’s bball for the big games!
There’s been a negative review that the club is snobby, but frankly I’ve never seen that. I’m a first-​generation domer and don’t think I’ve met anyone who wasn’t (my girlfriend aside). In fact, I’ve met a UC Davis alumnae and Lehigh-​transfer at the club, so it’s hardly suffocatingly exclusive.
No, people aren’t just going to blindly set you up with a job, and anyone who expects that an alumni connection should trump experience or competence was probably born a few generations too late.

Alumni clubs can be funny things. Usually, they’re all about networking, charity golf tournaments, and «speaker series,» which is a code word for fundraising. But since I got to go to grad school at Notre Dame for free, I don’t really mind when they hit me up for money. I don’t have very much of it, but that’s not their fault. (That would be LMU’s and USF’s faults, if you’re keeping score at home.)
The Notre Dame Club of San Francisco does have networking, golf tournaments, and speaker fundraisers; but they also host weekly game watches during the football season, and they’ve been known to add game watches for important basketball and other games as well. I don’t really like the current game-​watch location (Pete’s Tavern), but I must credit the club for introducing me to Harry’s Bar, the old game-​watch location. And they do listen to members’ criticism about game watches, or at least they listen to mine.
I’ve also gotten hard-​to-​come-​by football tickets through the club, and all the officers I know personally are really sweet people who seem like the complete opposite of what I would assume an alumni-​club officer would be like. They’re down to earth and genuinely friendly.