Social Networking

We all know that Alumni Associations are vital to colleges, universities, and schools around the world. The ability to tap into the network of graduates from your educational institution is important for many reasons. You want to be able to keep contact information up to date to build an effective directory. You want to allow alumni who have scattered across the globe to be able to find and connect with each other. And most importantly, you want to be able to know how to get in touch with your alumni when it comes to soliciting contributions back to the school.

As an effective Alumni Association is mission critical to increasing the profile of your college or university, have you ever wondered if your tools and methods are outdated? With so much of our personal lives and the information that goes along with them being ported online, have you wondered if your association may be lagging behind? Is your website stale and dreary, with no incentive for an alumnus to ever need to visit? Are you and your staff constantly buried under stacks of paper trying to organize and track the current information of your most important donor base? If you haven't started asking these questions, it's not too late. But you need to start now.

To be on the cutting edge of alumni relations, you need a website that goes to work for you. A website where people actively seek out, participate on, and find value in. Your website needs to do some, if not all, of the following:

• Allow alumni to search and find classmates and friends
• Allow alumni to build a personal social network to connect with others
• Easily update and maintain contact information linked to your master database
• Allow alumni to share photos, news, and events going on in their lives
• Provide for interaction and engagement in life and work experiences
• Be secure and allow for privacy among those inside their networks
• Allow for you to post news and announcements relevant to your alumni
• Post a calendar of events and allow for online registrations and payments
• Have a fun, inviting design that matches your school's brand

Your graduates are already used to the MySpaces and Facebooks of the world, and your alumni assocation website should engage in the ways that has made social networking a worldwide phenomenom. Recently, Eastern Virginia Medical School of Norfolk, Virginia came to the realization that they could no longer afford to sit back and lose out on the potential of having a website that worked for them. Here's a case study of their fresh and exciting website, with all the features that can be available for you!

Read more at http://www.alumni-websites.com