alumni futures

Survey on Twitter in Educational Advancement

[Update: The survey is now closed. Thanks for all who participated! Watch this space for results later in February.]

One year ago today Alumni Futures published a white paper on Twitter's potential as a tool for alumni relations. We are updating that paper's findings and predictions and will publish the new white paper here during February.

As part of our research we are again conducting our short (12 question) survey to collect information on which kinds of institutions are using Twitter for which purposes. Even if you don't use Twitter (or even if you don't know what it is) please take the survey. For those who don't use Twitter there are just three survey questions. 

Click this link to complete the survey:

Brief survey on Twitter in educational advancement

Thanks for your help! 

Watch this space for the new white paper in February: Alumni Networks and Twitter –An Update.

Alumni Associations and Twitter Lists

The popular microblogging service Twitter launched its "Lists" function a couple of months ago, and Twitter users can compile, publish and follow lists built around Twitter users with shared characteristics. For example, an alumni association can compile a list of its members' Twitter profiles to make it easier for alumni to connect via Twitter. This allows alumni to use Twitter as an alumni networking tool, not just as another communication channel. 

At Caltech we have followed back any of our followers we could identify as alumni or current students (as well as following faculty members and campus organizations using Twitter), and we recently compiled the alumni users into a Twitter list (you must be logged into Twitter to view it).  

Institutions could compile lists of volunteer leaders, regionally organized alumni, or alumni affinity group members (such as athletics, student government, performing arts or Greek life).

Twitter doesn't maintain a directory of public lists, but a recently launched service called Listorious bills itself as "The Directory of Awesome Lists on Twitter" and offers a compilation of alumni associations using Twitter (95 are listed as of this writing). 

They are listed in descending order, by how many followers they have:

http://listorious.com/EtiquetteWise/alumni-associations

It's important to remember that we're still at the beginning of the development and use of these kinds of tools, but keeping up with these trends will increase our ability to connect with alumni, and to connect them with our institution and each other. 

Is your association maintaining a list of alumni on Twitter? Do you have a different way of enabling the alumni network via Twitter? Leave a comment.

Alumni Relations Training in Europe: Registration Deadline

The registration deadline for the EAIE training course, Managing Alumni Programmes Effectively, is just a few days away. Although EAIE may accept late registrations, if you are interested in this workshop, register today.

The workshop is 17 to 19 March, 2010 in Paris, France. As summarized in the description, topics will include

• strategic planning
• alumni associations and non-traditional alumni groups
• records management
• alumni surveys, and
• communications and online community management.

I will be one of the faculty presenters at this event, which is designed for middle- and senior-level alumni relations managers from across Europe and the UK. I look forward to seeing several Alumni Futures European readers at this workshop in Paris!

Cool panograph of the Eiffel Tower by Alexandre Duret-Lutz via Creative Commons. 

2010: Alumni Relations Issues for the Year Ahead

Unlike many higher ed bloggers, I wasn't moved to do a year-end overview for 2009. But (at the risk of sounding pessimistic) I will look ahead at some of the large issues facing many – perhaps most – alumni associations. 

My belief that these issues are becoming central to our profession was reinforced last week at the meeting of the Association of Private College and University Alumni Directors (PCUAD) in Atlanta*. Many discussions among the thirty or so alumni executives present touched in one way or another on points that I am already concerned about. So what am I concerned about?

• I'm concerned about "mattering."

Senior administrators are questioning the relevance of alumni relations in the face of external and internal changes (i.e., competition for scarce resources). Will alumni organizations matter? 

• I'm concerned about our role as conveners.

People can and will self-organize into groups, so will we have a key role beyond brokering people's mutual interests? 

• I'm concerned because we've lost our monopoly on data. 

Search engines and social networks make people findable with little effort. Do we have information that alumni need, and that they cannot easily find somewhere else?

For all these questions, the answer may well be "yes." But we must still ask questions like these, and plan on long-term solutions that allow us to contribute to the success of alumni and their alma mater.  

With these concerns in mind, here are two additional questions to consider.

• Instead of doing many little things, as we have mostly done, should alumni associations focus on delivering a few larger programs and services, more central to the institution's core mission?

And...

• Should we focus more on supporting and connecting to the academic side of the institution? (Look for a guest blog post about this topic in the coming weeks.)

I've already mentioned several of these topics here in the last year, and most were originally raised first by others. I'm not claiming to be the first person to ask every one of these questions, I just want to generate in-depth conversation about them.

Please leave a comment or email me and continue the discussion. 

* Emory University did an outstanding job of hosting the PCUAD meeting. Shown here is the beautiful Miller-Ward Alumni House. Photo by Bill Ruhsam used with permission.