Project Repat: Alumni Social Enterprise

In this post EverTrue is proud to highlight a startup of social enterprise called Project Repat. Project Repat upcycles excess t-shirts into fun, fashionable and functional products while creating fair wage employment opportunities. This post comes from their President, Nathan Rothstein.

When I graduated from Umass-Amherst in 2006, I joined AmeriCorps and did a year of service in New Orleans. I was from far the Pioneer Valley, but the Umass alumni network still kicked in. There was a fellow alum working for the same non-profit, and a few other recent Umass grads joined AmeriCorps over the next year, and after seeing my name in the paper, a retired University of New Orleans professor invited a few young Umass alumni for brunch at Commander’s Palace. When students from Umass came to New Orleans to do service work, we helped them find places to work and people to meet with to learn about the different challenges and opportunities in post-Katrina New Orleans. Over the next few years, more students came for alternative spring break, and as more networking opportunities became available to newcomers, more Umass students moved to the city.

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Meet Pin-Bo, EverTrue’s Lead Designer

The post below is by Pin-Bo Tsai, the newest member and lead designer of the EverTrue team. Follow Pin-Bo on Twitter at @yopinbo.

EverTrue is all about nurturing and facilitating relationships, and in general, so isn’t having a successful life?

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Old School Goes New: Woodberry Forest Alumni Reunion

This is the second post of EverTrue’s Reunion Month Series, a time for reflecting on best practice and new ideas around alumni gatherings. In this post Jennifer Dowling, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications at Woodberry Forest School, reflects on how her community released EverTrue at their school during this year’s reunion.

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3 Lessons Learned From Alumni Reunions Past

This is the first post of EverTrue’s Reunion Month, a time for reflecting on best practice and new ideas around alumni gatherings. Our first guest post for the month comes from Sujata Adamson-Mohan, Director of Alumnae/i Relations at The Masters School and a client of EverTrue. In this post Sujata reflects on three lessons her office has learned from alumni reunions in the past.

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‘Bid for Good’ with Alumni Auctions

Alumni auctions are a common, but great way, to connect the supporters of your institution. Amidst the innocent bidding battles of alumni and parents, and the gracious volunteering of students, faculty and staff, auctions effectively bring together school communities under the cause of the institution.

For these popular fundraisers, alumni and development offices take creative approaches with theming. For example, Francis Parker School in San Diego puts a fun annual twist on their auction with themes such as “Cajun Carnivale” or “Haute Harley Nights”, while Lawrence Academy of Groton, MA looks to “Celebrate the Art of Teaching” this upcoming Saturday!

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Education Rocks the Blackbaud Online Giving Report

Every year Blackbaud releases their Online Giving Report to provide an analysis of giving trends on the web in the non-profit sector. In this annual report, Blackbaud provides insight on a multitude of trends. For EverTrue’s purpose, alumni, we took a particular interest at their findings in the education and higher education sectors, while also examining their most popular months of online giving.

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Alumni Networking: It’s Who Knows What you Know

The post below is by Mike Palladino, the newest member of the EverTrue team. Mike is a proud Taft, Northwood and Wesleyan alum and is excited to help EverTrue better connect alumni to their alma mater and one another! Follow Mike on Twitter at @PalladinoMike

I still remember my first week as a freshman at the Taft School in Watertown, CT. In the midst of meeting new friends, being cut from both the Varsity and the JV soccer teams, and having more homework than I ever thought possible, I noticed a recurring theme that seems to be at the heart of social and professional advancement: “Networking.”

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“America’s Best Prep Schools” on Social Media

In April 2010 Forbes listed “America’s Best Prep Schools” in an article highlighting their picks for the top twenty private secondary schools in the US.

According to Forbes, a third of the graduates that these schools produce attend ‘Top 10′ colleges including Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

It would not be difficult to detail the many well known and respected alumni that these prestigious schools account for, yet in this post we take a more social look at this list, in a similar way that we examined The Independent School League.

The charts below represent the largest accounts found for each school on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Facebook
We start our examination with the world’s largest social network, Facebook.

In a dominating fashion, but while also benefiting from one of the largest alumni communities for the count, Phillips Andover takes the lead in “Likes” on Facebook Pages. Andover takes an “all-encompassing” and open approach to their Facebook Page by encouraging prospective students, current students, alumni and faculty to become involved in the conversation.

However, other schools, such as Noble and Greenough, have a more targeted strategy with their Facebook Page by creating a place geared to graduates and their families. This strategy enables N&G to focus on more alumni centric messaging.

LinkedIn
As avid users and fans of LinkedIn, we were excited to see how members of the ‘Top 20′ would stack up based on the number of members they had in their LinkedIn Group.

Again, Philips Andover and Philips Exeter made a strong showing in this category, while, Lawrenceville School, Milton Academy and Deerfield round out the top five largest groups.

Twitter
Lastly on Twitter, Andover, Exeter and Deerfield once again appear at top spots, as Groton School and Horace Mann also demonstrate their social muscle by maintaining a strong Twitter following.

School Account Totals – Weighted By Current Enrollment on a 1-10 Score
The scale below for respectively, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, is a result of size of account (number of group members, likes and followers) divided by number of current students enrolled.

Implementing a mobile strategy is an important aspect of a social strategy.

EverTrue is proud to work with 9 of the ‘Top 20′ including Philips Andover, Deerfield, Horace Mann, Harvard-Westlake, Roxbury Latin, St. Paul’s School, The Winsor School, Milton Academy and Groton School.

Congrats to all those institutions who made Forbe’s “America’s Best Prep Schools.”

Alumni Giving Challenge: Suffield Academy

At EverTrue we keep a close eye on the fun alumni initiatives that our clients engage in to increase alumni giving. When we recently came across this compelling participation challenge by Suffield Academy in our inbox, we were instantly convinced that we wanted to share their most current campaign with our readers.

For the next 30 days, Suffield Academy aims to beat their rivals, The Williston Northhamption School and Berkshire School, in a race of alumni giving. Each day in the month of April, these schools will compete based on how many of their alumni give back to their institution.

As a team that appreciates a good rivalry, we found the simple messaging of this campaign effective: “Beat Williston” and “Beat Berkshire.” We also thought that Suffield Academy leveraged a very direct and reasonable request by telling alumni to participate with asking for a $5 gift. Beyond just using their website and an email marketing campaign to promote, Suffield went across all mediums by using their Facebook Page to get the word out even further!

Lastly, we found the video, shown below, an outstanding piece that showcased their student body getting involved in the campaign, and making an ask that we found engaging.

Good luck to Suffield, and to all schools in the midst of final pushes for alumni annual fund campaigns!

Have you recently seen a giving campaign that you admire? Let us know!

April Fools: EverTrue Launches Print Directory

Since the day we founded EverTrue, we have taken a “mobile first, web second” approach given our enthusiasm for the rapidly evolving smartphone market. While we remain focused on further enhancing our mobile alumni networking platform, we are excited to announce our newest product line: EverPrint – our print alumni directory & CD-ROM.

Although the mobile market is growing rapidly, the harsh reality is that only 49% of Americans have a smartphone. This compares to 100% of Americans who have access to print materials. After analyzing the numbers, it was clear that we needed to extend our reach to serve the entire alumni community.

We have spent the last six months repackaging our mobile platform into a beautiful print directory experience. While the New iPad claims to be “Resolutionary”, mobile and tablet devices are simply incapable of offering the tactile responsiveness of paper. Furthermore, print directories offer truly “on demand” access without the constraints of overburdened carrier networks or limited battery life. This print platform will extend EverTrue’s reach to all corners of the globe in addition to the promising lunar market.

EverTrue’s VP of Alumni Engagement, Jesse Bardo, is thrilled about the new offering noting that, “while evangelizing the EverTrue alumni mobile offering, I kept getting asked, ‘but what if my constituents don’t have the internet?’ With our new print directory product, we finally have an answer.”

Eric Carlstrom, EverTrue CTO, also stated his enthusiasm for the CD-ROM package:”When our team had the idea, I said NO WAY. It can not be done. You can’t fit an entire alumni community on *one* CD-ROM. But, then, our team got busy. What we created is nothing short of a miracle.”

We’re pricing the mobile print alumni directory on par with solutions from industry leaders including Harris Connect and PCI.

EverTrue Print Alumni Directory Pricing
Collector’s Edition (hardbound) and CD Package- $109.00 +$16.95 Shipping and Handling
Regular Edition (softbound) and CD Package- $99.99 + $16.95 Shipping and Handling
Collector’s Edition (hardbound)- $99.99 + $11.95 Shipping and Handling
CD Rom- $99.99 + $9.95 Shipping and Handling
Regular Edition (softbound)- $79.99 + $11.95 Shipping and Handling Reunion CD (2yrs prior & 2yrs post alumni class yr)- $24.99 + $7.95 Shipping and Handling

“Our objective is to connect alumni to each other and to Brown,” said Todd Andrews ‘85, Vice President of Alumni Relations at Brown University, “and even in the digital age, the print directory helps to make that happen.”

“In 2006, Dartmouth alumni purchased 6,000 print directories for $100 each representing $600,000 in revenue, so print feels like a natural extension for EverTrue” said TechStars CEO David Cohen. “Furthermore, the massive amounts of paper produced by the print alumni directory industry will help bolster the declining logging industry, which is a sector TechStars is very interested in”.

In order to support this new initiative, EverTrue is raising the price of its previously free alumni apps to $109 in the iPhone and Android markets.

“As a beta tester of both the EverTrue print directory and the EverTrue mobile application, it’s my humble opinion that the mobile app is much more user friendly and effective than the print version. Therefore, the $109 mobile app price tag seems fair relative to the utility I receive from the print version,” said Phillips Andover Academy alumnus and New York Giant Zak Deossie ‘03.

HAPPY APRIL FOOLS DAY FROM THE TEAM AT EVERTRUE!