Spotlight On

Making a Better Connection
Whether large or small, many organizations find it beneficial to break their constituent base into chapters or clubs based on interests or regions.  The benefits to this approach are many, but primarily it helps strengthen bonds within a smaller, more targeted group of alumni.  Taking this one step further and putting volunteer leaders in charge of managing events and relationships for each club – the strain on internal resources can be lightened significantly. 

And while many organizations may not have trouble finding alumni volunteers, they all agree that giving them the right tools to succeed in their efforts is crucial to keeping them on board.  That is the philosophy behind the club and chapter pages, which enable your volunteers to create “mini-sites” where they can post content and surveys, as well as promote and manage events. Here’s a look at how three of our clients use this functionality to support their unique objectives.

Emory University
Emory University has both regional-based chapters, as well as several special interest clubs such as the Caucus for Emory Black Alumni, Emory Young Alumni and Gay and Lesbian Alumni, among others.  Due to the size of their alumni base – over 90,000 – the Association of Emory Alumni has worked hard to formalize the way each of these groups is governed.

"Each club has an alumni leadership board that oversees communications and activities,” explains Jennifer Crabb, Director, Alumni Services and Leadership Development.  “The size of the board varies based on the size of the club or chapter, but generally speaking each group will have its own designated Webmaster to manage its pages on our site.”

The chapters and clubs have complete ownership over their own pages where they can post information on events, meeting minutes, general announcements and more.  Ms. Crabb says the introduction of this application nearly three years ago has really re-energized their chapter and club efforts.  “For us, the key to keeping our volunteer leaders active is to keep them interested and feeling viable.  I think that it is easier now for them to create their own identity.”  She also says that the chapter and club pages give the groups a real sense of autonomy and, as a result, volunteers feel much more a part of the Association’s decision-making process.

As far as the Association itself is concerned, Ms. Crabb says that their chapter and club structure simply helps Association staff extend their reach.  “Our staff is limited, but with these ‘ambassadors’ for Emory combined with their dedicated Web pages – we have a constant presence in some of the major cities and countries around the world.  Our volunteer leaders really love Emory, and their enthusiasm and dedication is critical to helping keep our alumni connected.”

Ms. Crabb goes on to say, “What we like best about the chapter pages is that we are able to control the general look and feel of the Emory brand without compromising the grassroots efforts of our individual clubs.”

Phillips Exeter Academy
With close to 30 volunteer Webmasters managing individual class pages, Phillips Exeter Academy has a robust, targeted online presence. 

According to Marc Bessler, Data Support Specialist, these class pages are just a natural outgrowth of the school’s original class coordinator structure where alumni were responsible for writing columns and managing class notes for print publications.  “When we implemented the class pages about three years ago, we simply began transitioning these responsibilities to an online format.”  And he says that this transition has been fairly easy given the intuitive nature of Harris Connects’ application.  “There are really just a couple of unique elements our volunteer Webmasters need to learn, and we’ve found that most get up to speed pretty quickly.”

Mr. Bessler explains that like most institutions, their volunteers have full publishing rights and can post new content directly, without any internal review.  But, he acknowledges, even the most experienced Web users make mistakes – which is why he finds the historical archives to be so valuable.  “Not too long ago, we had a Webmaster delete all the existing content on a page while trying to update it.  Naturally, he was pretty upset thinking he was going to have to recreate the entire page, but I was able to go into the archives and retrieve it so that, in the end, all he had to do was add the new content he wanted.”

The biggest challenge Exeter faces, Mr. Bessler says, is helping their volunteers see the impact of what they are doing. “Our volunteers sometimes ask us if the time they are spending is really worth it because they don’t always see an immediate response from alumni,” he explains.  “This was especially true when we were dealing primarily in print, but now – we can help our Web volunteers understand how to make content as dynamic as possible to keep alumni coming back to the site again and again.”  He says this helps create a dialogue among alumni so that volunteers see results of their work much faster than before.

Exeter won the Peer Recognition Award for the best use of chapter pages at the 2005 User’s Conference.  To see what they’ve done, check out http://phillips.exeter.edu/classof/1970.  Next up for the Alumni Association is to explore rolling this functionality out to its regional based clubs, one of which is already online.  “We have a very active alumni base in Thailand, so we are starting there – hoping to learn more about how we can formalize the process and put the tool in the hands of other regional clubs.”

Beyond this, Exeter is currently monitoring traffic on the class pages to see if there is any correlation with an increase in attendance at reunions.  Mr. Bessler says that in general they see good numbers coming to the Web from younger classes as you would expect, but have also noticed a spike in both volunteerism and Web traffic among baby boomers as they begin retiring and have more time on their hands.

Harvard Business School

For Harvard Business School, the chapter pages really represent their commitment to searching out new technologies.  And that’s why they’ve given their regional chapters full publishing rights, as well as access to their broadcast email tool.

"We are blessed with a group of alumni that have a natural inclination toward leadership and action,” explains Dean Fanikos, Associate Director of Alumni Relations.  “That’s one of the reasons it is so important for our chapters to feel completely autonomous – and giving them the tools they need grow their constituency is the best way we can do that.”

Mr. Fanikos does acknowledge that, like others, they struggled with the idea of adding broadcast email to their chapter solution set.  “Certainly, broadcast email is clearly the most easily (and most often) abused form of communication,” he says.  “But we’ve had no complaints from our alumni about receiving too many emails, or emails they didn’t want – and because it helps our volunteer leaders get the word out so efficiently without adding to our daily workload, it has been well worth whatever risk we anticipated.”

He goes on to explain that because the groups are so autonomous, the Alumni Association really encourages peer-to-peer learning when it comes to training on the tools.  “Our volunteers and various clubs are all at different points of the learning curve.  We do typically host a WebEx training session for new clubs coming online, but we also point volunteers to look at other pages and reach out to those clubs for advice and guidance.”

While Mr. Fanikos believes this peer-to-peer interaction is critical on many levels, he’s also excited about Harris Connects’ new online training modules.  “We expect that these self-directed training sessions will simply help our volunteers deepen their understanding of what they can do with the chapter pages, event management tool and broadcast email capability.”

Ultimately, Mr. Fanikos says the chapter pages help HBS deliver on their promise of lifelong learning.  “The regional chapters were designed specifically to give our alumni a forum to come together to learn – whether from one another, or through our faculty and CEO speakers series,” he says.  “The fact that we can promote and cross-promote events on the chapter pages brings more alumni out, and really increases our ability to stay connected with them.”

With this focus on a variety of alumni events, Mr. Fanikos says that by far the event management module is most critical to helping them meet their objectives.  “Not only does this application help our leaders and us manage our schedule on a global basis, it really helps them manage attendance upfront.  There’s no more guessing or manual tabulation when it comes to determining how many people will be there.  It saves on resources, but can also save our clubs a significant amount of money.”

Also, because alumni use the regional clubs for many purposes – including networking – Mr. Fanikos is interested to explore Harris Connects’ social networking technology.  “We are seeing a trend for more one-on-one networking, with people shifting away from the larger alumni clubs as a networking tool. I’m certainly interested in taking advantage of that shift in as innovative a way as possible.”