The Future of Alumni Networking is at the Grass Roots

That’s a fair summary of the session entitled “The Future of Community and Affinity in an Online World” presented by Daniel Guhr, Andy Shaindlin from Caltech, and Louis Alexander from MIT at the CASE Summit on 13 July.

Guhr, from Illuminate Consulting Group, provided a fairly high-level view of today’s social networking environment. [I can’t reproduce Guhr’s slides, but a dramatic visual and a graph of activity on social networks is here.]

One of the most telling comments, as far as I’m concerned, is that today’s kids are participating in social networking environments like Club Penguin and Webkinz. They’ll continue networking as they graduate to Facebook (or, more likely, a successor) when they’re teens and ready to apply to and enter college. Then, after graduation, they’ll move into a corporate social network like the ones that are being built by McKinsey & Company and other large progressive networked organizations.

In any case, coming generations will live much of their social life online; the Internet will hold things together.

So in this environment, what use, really, is a closed, proprietary online network? Andy Shaindlin pointed out, “Today’s alumni have demonstrated quite clearly that they’ve decided what tools to use, and don’t care what you give them.” There are plenty of high-quality services that are easy to use, so it quite possible that in the future self-organizing groups of alumni could hold their own reunions without any input from an institution or alumni professionals.

Of course, that happened in the old days, too, when a group of alumni friends called each other on the phone and planned a weekend at the lake with their spouses. But it’s so much easier today.

Shaindlin pointed out that alumni relations professionals still think of alumni as “outside” the institution but now that they are increasingly holding a conversation about the institution without us, we are the outsiders. “They are at the center of the community and we visit them,” he noted.

Outsiders can still play a valuable role, however. A new model for alumni relations may be as the coach that helps these self-organizing groups connect with valuable institutional resources and coaxes them into meeting institutional goals.

MIT’s Alumni Association has worked with entering students through a Facebook presence for four years now (the first class of students with whom the Institute’s alumni office has had a Facebook-mediated relationship just graduated). Lou Alexander pointed out that “we can’t control the content or direction of these conversations, but we do want to be part of them and influence them.”

This past year, the Alumni Association used Facebook to identify leaders for the Senior Gift program and these students made their asks using Facebook. He reported: “In the first year of Facebook, participation in the senior class gift almost doubled (to 51 %). Last year, it jumped to 64%.” Sounds as if meeting people where they are makes good sense.

The primary shift taking place: the university or institution once held the information necessary for the alumni network to scale and the only way that alumni could access that network was to play by whatever rules the institution made up and to use its system. That’s changed: now the power is with the people and the conversations are going on without the institution mediating them. It’s a powerful paradigm shift, and alumni relations professionals need to be prepared for it to happen—and probably sooner rather than later.

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Social Networks Usurping Alumni Magazine Audiences?

Institutions that have moved to embrace various online forms of communication-either alumni-only communities powered or publicly accessible communities-are used to the more free-form style of communication common to social networks, rather than the structured, print-like milestones of birth, marriage, childbirth, death.

For example:

The online version of Colgate’s alumni magazine is a blog, so people can leave comments about articles and one another, said Charlie Melichar, a spokesman for the university. “Alumni overwhelmingly are the ones making comments on stories, about faculty, to congratulate a team on victory,” he said. “Alumni are certainly not just heavy users — they’re heavy engagers.”

Engagement. That’s long been a goal of the pioneers who adopted email, listservs, and other pre-Facebook forms of online networking and communications. It’s now coming to pass as Millennials, Gen Xers, and even Boomers make applications like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter an integral part of their work lives, as well as their social lives.

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Interesting New Publisher and Business Model for 02138

Today’s New York Times reveals that a small publisher in New York, Manhattan Media, has acquired a magazine for Harvard alumni and hopes to make it a controlled circulation print/web/social network/events property. And then, if the model works, roll it out to the rest of the Ivies.

They’re acquiring 02138 [that’s the zip code for Cambridge, MA., in case you didn’t recognize it], a magazine for Harvard alumni currently owned by Atlantic Media, which owns The Atlantic and National Journal. 02138 is independent of Harvard University. It

first appeared in 2006, offering articles on alumni and staff, and campus goings-on. It publishes an annual Harvard 100, a ranking of the university’s most influential alumni: last year, its top five, in order, were Al Gore, President Bush, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Senator Barack Obama and Bill Gates.

I don’t know much about Manhattan Media; according to their website, they concentrate on community newspapers in (guess where?)-Manhattan. But the business model for this endeavor is mighty interesting-one I’ll pay attention to, even though I’m not a Harvard alumnus.

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LinkedIn for Alumni

Caltech, where Andy is executive director of the Alumni Association, has about 8 percent of alumni using LinkedIn. Though he describes problems in signing on with LinkedIn-lack of measurement being just one of them-it’s clear that for Caltech, the program is working. More details here.

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Social Networks and Development Research

Next month the California Advancement Researchers Association is hosting its Spring Seminar Day here at Caltech.  (CARA is a regional segment of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement). We have zero contact with the Development Research staff’s professional organizations, so we were pleasantly surprised in the alumni office to receive an invitation to speak to the group’s May meeting.

According to Kimberly Ordunio, Caltech’s manager of development research, one topic the group wants the alumni office to help them explore is "the potential for social networking sites as research tools." We spend a lot of time thinking about the role of social networks in alumni relations, so it’s interesting to us that our colleagues in research are thinking along related lines.

I asked Kimberly how she and other development research professionals use online networking sites for their work, and she said:

I’ve used business networking sites such as LinkedIn as a tool for prospect identification; to try to find lost alumni; and sporadically as an added resource while researching individuals, especially when I’ve hit dead ends with standard resources. I’m sure many of my colleagues have done the same. But I have yet to use these resources in what I would call a regular or systematic fashion. Social and business networking sites have a lot of potential – especially for uncovering connections between constituents. But there are definite pros and cons to using these sites as a resource.

Some potential negatives? For starters, Kimberly cites the following:

• Information found on most sites is self-reported and may be inflated and/or inaccurate.
• Independently verifying this info is not always easy, especially with private company affiliations. (Kimberly adds a "self-reported" disclaimer to this info in a research profile.)
• There are ethical and legal questions surrounding the use of social networking sites specifically for identifying potential donors. For example, Facebook users agree not to use the information from its site for "any…form of solicitation."

Meanwhile, I wonder if enterprising alumni shops are already partnering with research for this particular purpose? Information submitted to your online community is likely ending up in your development database. Does that conform to the promises you make to alumni when they share the info in the first place? Check your online community privacy policy just in case…

You do have a privacy policy, right?

Note: This post is by Andy Shaindlin, executive director of the alumni association at Caltech. It’s Andy’s last post as our guest blogger—though you can continue to follow Andy’s thoughts at Alumni Futures.

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Online Business Networks for Alumni

Business networking is different from social networking. Social network sites allow you to share personal information and to view and connect with your friends and their friends. Business networks showcase your professional expertise while connecting you to your professional contacts’ own networks.

Alumni associations already have online directories, many of which have profile systems that do some of the same things business networking sites do. So why bother with commercial business networks that include millions of people who aren’t your alumni? Because:

• your alumni are using those sites more than they use yours;
• these networks are vast in comparison to your alumni population;
• they include densely interwoven connections among alumni and others;
• their functionality differs from your alumni web site’s functionality.

Some alumni associations are creating groups on LinkedIn, perhaps the most populated business networking site. A colleague and I posted a "think piece" in the 2006 Higher Education Blog Conference, exploring the role of third-party business networks in the alumni relations toolbox. I think our observations remain relevant today. Read it for a structured exploration of some basic questions, including:

• Do alumni networks even exist?
• Are commercial networking sites a threat to alumni associations?
• What makes alumni-to-alumni interactions unique?
• Can associations benefit from connecting alumni with non-alumni?
• How might alumni professionals collaborate with commercial sites?

Meanwhile LinkedIn has been plagued with growing pains, almost doubling its membership in the last twelve months. And its customer service has suffered. With about ten million users as of this writing, LinkedIn is pedaling fast to catch up with customer expectations and it remains to be seen how that will play out. There are many independent discussion groups for LinkedIn users as well as a couple of blogs that focus on the site’s ups and downs.

In an upcoming post I’ll talk about the potential advantages and some caveats for organizations thinking of creating alumni groups on LinkedIn, as well as some lessons our office has learned in the 22 months we’ve run our alumni group there. For homework, you might want to read our Higher Ed BlogCon posting and then check out the following sites related to online business networking.

LinkedIn.com’s "About" page

Scott Allen’s LinkedIntelligence blog

XING, an online business networking site popular outside the U.S.

The Virtual Handshake Blog, a useful resource guide

Business Week piece on corporate uses of online networking sites

Note: This post is by Andy Shaindlin, executive director of the alumni association at Caltech and author of Alumni Futures, who will be our guest blogger until mid-April.

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Boomers Love the Net for Research, Shopping

According to the survey:

ThirdAgers spend time on the Internet are to seek out information (92%), to stay in touch with friends and family (95%) and to shop online (73%)inter. Other high percentage activities include general browsing of the Web (95%), reading articles (91%) and research products before purchasing offline (86%).

But—they aren’t writing blog entries, watching online videos, or downloading music. (Though I wonder if that will change when and if the Beatles come to iTunes, as has been widely rumored for months.)

Here is some data about the way Boomers respond to offline marketing:

• 79% would respond to promotional e-mails about products and services


• 92% have read about a Web site in a print article(magazine, newspaper) and then visited online


• 89% have seen a print ad and later visited the online site


• 83% have seen a Web site advertised on television and later visited it online


• 65% will visit a Web site address after hearing it on a radio commercial

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Second Thoughts on Second Life

Second Life is a metaverse-a 3-D, totally immersive virtual world. Visitors to Second Life create an avatara character that represents you as you wander about and interact with others through text-based chat. You can buy land and build a house or purchase merchandise using virtual currency, create an event, and do things with other visitors. In Second Life, the only limitation is your imagination-and that of others, since part of the attraction of SL is interaction with other residents.

You can teach classes in Second Life, as Sarah Robbins, a Ball State University graduate student, is doing. Or create a virtual island for your college, as Vassar did, and offer tours to visitors. Or build a gymnasium, giving visitors a taste of what it would be like to visit the real gym, which they could help to build on your campus if they make a (real) contribution.

Realistically, though, much of the current wave of activity in Second Life is based on the media hype around it. Linden Labs has touted the growth of its virtual world. And there’s been a huge wave of PR by commercial entities like Reebok, Adidas, American Apparel, H&R Block, Toyota, Duran Duran and others who established “stores,” “islands,” or other (virtual) presences in Second Life as beachheads for their brands. For example, an announcement that American Apparel was launching in Second Life resulted in a huge amount of publicity. Last year, SL got a lot of publicity when it reached 2 million visitors.

Do I sound skeptical? Call me a Luddite, but I think advancement offices and recruiters have more important things to do than think about Second Life right now. To me-and many others-this is all too reminiscent of the dot.com boom, with lots of hype and magical thinking about what this metaverse might become. The key word in that sentence is “might.”

For all its promise, the fundamental problem is that no one has convinced me that Second Life has enough visitors to make a presence worthwhile. Clay Shirky and others have commented pretty convincingly on SL’s churn. While a lot of people have heard about Second Life and visit it to find out what it’s all about, the number who return-and return often-is much, much smaller. Some people are interested enough to persist, but many more get frustrated and give up.

Having a presence in Second Life isn’t like installing AIM on your computer and starting to chat with your friends. It’s just not that easy to develop an avatar and maneuver within the world. It takes some patience and commitment on the part of visitors-and who has patience these days? And, from the standpoint of an organization or an institution, committing the time and resources to create and manage your presence in Second Life is a challenge. You have to know the world and the expectations of its residents-you have to go native. If not, you’re in trouble: other Second Lifers will spot you for a fake.

The LA Times reported on how disappointed Second Life residents are in the efforts of the marketers who’ve infested the world but weren’t committed to creating something worthy of it. Some residents established the Second LIfe Liberation Army, whose protests have included exploding atomic bombs outside a virtual American Apparel outlet; other residents gave the SLLA (virtual) money to buy (virtual) guns and other weapons to enable their protests. In short, virtual NIMBYs at work.

I do find all this fascinating. At best, it’s engaging and fun. At worst, nonproductive—with little sign of a (real) payoff any time soon. It’s one thing to let alumni know that a class has established a presence in Second LIfe and invite them to join in the lectures. It’s another to devote scarce resources in PR, development or alumni relations to something more ambitious. For the moment, I’d follow what’s happening in this virtual world while keeping well-grounded IRL.

IRL? That’s “In Real Life”—an acronym common in earlier MUDDs, MOOs, and virtual reality experiments and still very important.

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Alumni Relations Communities of Practice (CoPs)

Meanwhile, alumni professionals are investing time and effort in smaller communities of practice, groups of similar institutions with whom it makes sense to benchmark and to share ideas. The groups’ acronyms are a Scrabble player’s dream…PCUAD, SCICAP, NEAR, SCAD and more (the full names of these groups are listed at the end of this posting). While CoPs like these have existed for a long time, lately they seem to be picking up steam.

CASE’s strongest suit may be its scale: the sheer number of members and participating institutions represents a tremendous wealth of experience and expertise. Furthermore, CASE advocates on our behalf when there are legislative or policy issues that affect support for higher education.

But the CoPs are positioned to take advantage of their members’ unique characteristics. In the (not yet published) April 2007 issue of Currents magazine, RIT’s executive director of alumni relations Kelly Redder writes about one CoP’s contribution to its members’ effectiveness: benchmarking among like institutions. In an upcoming post on Alumni Futures I’ll highlight Kelly’s comments and try to spur some thinking about the value of CoPs for your own work.

• How will CoPs influence CASE’s role in the future?
• Might CASE become a hub for functional CoPs, instead of an expansive core for the profession?

While CASE remains dominant as the umbrella, CoPs seem to grow in number, sophistication and specialization. CoPs are capable of feeding innovation and improvements in practice to CASE, and it will be CASE’s job in that instance to spread the word through the professions.

Alphabet Soup – A few Communities of Practice:
PCUAD: Association of Private College & University Alumni Directors
NEAR: North East Alumni Relations
SCAD: Small College Alumni Directors
SCICAP: Southern California Independent College Alumni Programs

(There are numerous other groups organized by region, athletic conference and institutional type as well. Tell us about the ones you belong to by leaving a comment.)

Note: This post is by Andy Shaindlin, executive director of the alumni association at Caltech and author of Alumni Futures, who will be our guest blogger until mid-April.

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Should Alumni Relations Be Blogging?

Over at Blogging for Business, author and blogger Ted Demopoulos asked “why aren’t more alumni associations blogging?” Ted’s primary point is that “blogs are great ways to build community.”He suggested these ways to get started with alumni relations blogging:

a group blog, where several bloggers each blog occasionally,

student-written blogs, and

hosting a list of alumni blogs.

In a linked podcast interview, Ted says that “alumni web sites don’t work as well as they used to.”Although I hope he’s the last person to mention alumni associations in the same sentence as Enron and Tyco (why not throw in WorldCom?),
his point is that official-sounding organizational web sites have less appeal than they used to, compared with informal, conversational sites such as blogs. (I wrote in an earlier post that alumni web sites would get more traffic if organizations and websurfers used RSS feeds to syndicate and to read dynamic web pages.)

Meanwhile, what problem will you solve by creating an alumni relations blog? As with all alumni programs and services the real question to answer is "what do your alumni need?"

Here’s an idea for someone daring: Continue providing the same kind of information you already offer online, but use a blogging format instead of the static informational pages you have now. For example, which calendar item sounds more interesting?

This one?

March 28, Noon to 2 pm
Admitted Students Reception: Detroit Area
Organizer: Alumni Association
Contact: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Description: Reception for admitted students.
Location: The home of Jayne Mayne ‘88, 100 Main Avenue, Oak, MI 48000
RSVP Info: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Or this one?

It’s that time of year-top high school seniors have their envelope from State U-either the fat envelope (good!), or the thin one (sorry!). Up near the Motor City auto industry exec Jayne Mayne ‘88 hosts the fat-envelope crowd at her hip downtown loft next Sunday (3/28) from noon to 2:00. Want to meet the admits and some other alumni? Shoot a note to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and let us know how many are coming and we’ll send directions and get you on the RSVP list. (Lucky for you, we’re like THIS with Jayne). See you there!

You get the idea. Give it a shot…I dare you.

Note: This post is by Andy Shaindlin, executive director of the alumni association at Caltech and author of Alumni Futures, who will be our guest blogger until mid-April.

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