Social Networking—what’s in it for us?

Social Networking makes alumni and development folks’ lives much easier in some basic ways.  We spend so much time, energy and resources—human and financial—on four areas for which Social Networking offers easy solutions:

Lost alumni.  Despite all the advances in automatic address correction etc, none of us likes to see those return to sender piles following a big mailing.  Not only does each represent a little bit of extra postage cost, each also represents lost opportunity to tell our story, as well as additional labor and cost as the each piece works its way into whatever lost alumni processing  your office might follow.

Identifying class influencers.  Who is the best person(s) to sign those invite letters to reunion or annual fund solicitation letters?  Sure the president of the graduating class of 1994 is still active on the alumni board, but how many people in her class still think of her as a friend 16 years out?

Solicitors Who would make best solicitors of whom in the Campaign?  Bob and Ted both offer to solicit
Alice.  Who’s the more appropriate, or might the best person be Betty?

Interests Just what sorts of things do our leading prospects care about—on campus or in the world?  Sure he was in a fraternity when an undergraduate, but how much time and money are you prepared to spend to figure out that this real love was, and continues to be the library?

Social Networking empowers our alumni to answer all four questions for us. When we provide them the place and the means to keep contact information up to date, list their friends and business contacts and indicate or discuss their areas of interest or concern,  we’re letting them do much of our grunt work…..and maybe, just maybe they’ll thank us for it!