Alumni E-Networks: Using Technology to Engage Alumni and Constituents
Holly Peterson, Director of Alumni Affairs, World Learning
Tristan Roberts, Staff Writer for Alumni Communication, World Learning
“If I want to find my college or study abroad classmates, what do I do? I don’t call them or write them letters. I log into my email, type their names (not their email addresses – the technology does that for me) into the address line of a black email message and send it off. Usually it’s less than four lines, and often it includes a smiley somewhere in the message. Does this mean I have less meaningful, in-depth conversation with my friends than if I wrote them a letter or called them? Maybe. But it means that I keep in touch with friends I would have long lost were it not for the ease of communication. And I’m not even a member of the millennium generation.” Holly Peterson, March 2006
Several years ago, World Learning, including The Experiment in International Living, the School for International Training (SIT) and SIT Study Abroad, found itself in an interesting position. Our organization has thousands of alumni engaged in international, intercultural and social justice work in nearly every country in the world. However, we had little contact with this great pool of alumni. We needed to find a way to connect with them, and to connect them with each other.
The goal of our project was two-fold: to better serve our alumni base by allowing them to network with each other, and to enlist alumni as advocates for and supporters of World Learning. When we realized that our alumni base is largely young, mobile, and globally dispersed, we knew that we would need to engage them in non-traditional ways, including primarily through new communications technology.
With that in mind, we set out to find a set of tools that would allow us to make these connections. These tools had to be web-based and have strong email and directory components, as well as listserv, blog, and content management capability. They also had to be affordable. Over the course of one year, we research software, met with vendors and implemented our new online community for alumni: OurWorld (ourworld.worldlearning.org).
The PowerPoint, Word document and podcast outline our process, achievements and new goals for this project. We hope it will help others going through a similar process, and will also spark debate about “where we go from here” in using technology to reach students and alumni in an increasingly complex and borderless world.
Get the audio interview with Holly Peterson and Tristan Roberts, conducted by Robert French in March, 2006 (15:39; mp3).
April 18th, 2006 at 12:44 am
I’m a senior PR major at Auburn University currently completing an internship with the University’s Office of Development (a fancy name for fundraising for anyone not familiar).
Facebook came to Auburn in 2004 and last I heard there are 22,000 users from our .edu domain. It has crept its way into the Major Gifts office where I work because of young people like me logging on in our spare time.
What no one here has realized before and part of what I’ve preached to our development officers is that the Facebook is a treasure trove of information about future donor prospects.
Sure, recent alumni and soon-to-be graduates like me may not have the money to give now. But, as your screen/pod/skypecast pointed out, the majority of users will keep their profiles long after they are students. That means all their clubs, interests and social networks are at our disposal to aide in identifying and cultivating future donors.
Besides the information resources, Facebook is an opportunity to establish a giving atmoshpere among young alumni. Imagine a Facebook group exclusively for donors that recognizes them for certain levels of gifts, no matter how small. Suddenly, giving becomes popular and a whole new generation of donors has been established.
Those are my thoughts, anyway. Thanks for talking about this subject.