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.