Opportunity Overview

• Opportunity Solution: Our group intends to build an application/webpage that will act as a social media platform for a university's alumni. This application will give alumni the opportunity to build profiles detailing their profession, interests, and contact information. The alumni can then join different communities within the platform ranging from informal topics such as cooking and rock climbing, to formal topics such as alumni members working in data science. They will be able to post within these communities and interact with other alumni who share the same interests. Another feature in our platform will be the option to supply the university with their personal contact information.
• The Problem: Through reading the transcript provided by the teaching team, we learned that alumni are looking for a way to connect on a more personal level with other alumni. It was emphasized that networking doesn’t have to be through serious topics, it can also be through informal issues.
• Needs and Goals Addressed:
  • Needs Addressed: Supplying alumni a central location to update their personal information, giving the university access to alumni contact information, and providing alumni the ability to search for and connect with other alumni based on their personal interests.
  • Goals Addressed: Strengthening the connection within the alumni community and creating easier management of the alumni network for the university.

Stakeholders and Users

• University leadership – Our automatically created alumni profile (due to the extra step added to graduation process) will give foundation of tracking alumni career status as they will be asked to fill out career plans, and everytime they change their status in the application it will update the database with their new position and employer
• Alumni – the application will be a place where alumni will be able to keep their fellow alumni updated with their current employer and contact information
• University partners and employers – their employees who are alumni of UW can create group so that the employers will be able alumni working in their organization
• Alumni association – will be able to advertise their events and services because they will have an account as an admin, keeping the alumni involved

Organization Challenges and Opportunities

• Lack of awareness: Association membership seems to be the main way that alumni indicate that they’re interested in continuing to receive communication from the university, so there’s a huge group of alumni who are not kept updated and are generally unaware of various events or opportunities of the university.
• Low alumni involvement: Because the number of alumni who have opted in for association membership isn’t at a level where we want it to be, there are fewer alumni who are actively involved in alumni programs. This is detrimental to the alumni network program because the lack of engagement limits the connections that can possibly be made between fellow alumni and also limits the size/frequency of programs that depend on this network (i.e., mentorship, sponsored events, etc.)
• Alumni Sponsors: If we can create a product attractive enough to motivate alumni (especially ones who are currently inactive in the community) to explore and utilize our product, there’s a huge opportunity of gaining alumni sponsors and increasing available funds for better program development.
• Lack of opportunity to connect informally: Once alumni enter the workforce, countless well-developed resources and platforms are available to them to maintain professional connections with fellow alumni and the general public. With this being one of the biggest selling points of alumni association membership, this may be the reason why a good amount of alumni don’t see the point of signing up. Creating and advertising a centralized platform for university alumni to connect on a more personal level has the opportunity of adding to the appeal of a membership, increasing alumni network activity as a result.

Organization Benefits and Metrics

• Increased Alumni Association Enrollment: The University of Washington Administration will have a page that all members are enrolled in and can see Alumni Events that are coming up, which require an Alumni Association membership. This will encourage non-registered Alum to enroll so they can participate in events and network with other alumni.
• Increased Alumni Donations: As Alumni Enrollment increases, so do donations because memberships cost a fee. Also, someone who is part of the association is more likely to donate because they will have more benefits and be more active in the UW alum community.