Recently in Meeting Notes Category
In attendance: Jeff Goodman, Boaz Milgalter (OmniMagnet - makers of AlumniMagnet); Chris Wilczak, Julie Chiron, William Moudry, Sharon Bradford, Reneé Finnell
This meeting was primarily to introduce all the members of the core working team to each other, but some interesting points were made.
- There are roughly 25 active domestic regional clubs, still under 50 with the international team thrown in. There are 5 frontline staff dedicated to alumni clubs.
- We must deliver on alumni managed sites, event registrations, communications, and reports. This product will change the way we work with alums so there is concern about how we roll it out.
- Currently, a lot of staff time is spent looking up IDs for degree information for registered alumni. We expect that the AM tool will facilitate that. Also, events information doesn't feed into Griffin so it makes using it tricky.
- Staff communicate with club managers via bi-monthly leadership calls, and posting and sharing content via email. There is also a larger annual training (Volunteer Caucus).
- Getting access to the alumni directory and making sure alumni can find each other is very important; profile searching could be more user friendly, there could be a more robust search engine, they would like to see who is coming to events, it is currently difficult for people to be members of more than one list; also communication preferences are difficult to manage
- In the Pilot program, behavioral considerations are as important as technological considerations.
- Tier 1 groups are LA, SF, Chi, DC, NY, Boston. SF and DC have their own bank accounts. The mid-tier groups are happy with the University providing some of the service for them.
- The vendor points out that the components of a successful pilot are behavior, marketing, and administering. We talked through 2 key tools: the support mechanism and the PGP (policy, guide, and procedures). Clubs usually have 2 head administrators who are able to interact with the support queue for their club. Support requests can be technically related or they can be questions about other alumni services. If the club administrator can't answer the question, they escalate the problem to the University staff. If it's something the staff can't handle (usually a tech issue or feature request) then they escalate to AlumniMagnet staff. The PGP document is something we might want to get the ABG involved in creating or considering. The vendor will share with us some documents that other clients have used to get started. This is the "contract" between the University and the club manager.
- The vendor talked to us about using these sites for things other than clubs. For example, Bridget Krause could host a Volunteer Manager / Officer's Lounge type forum. We might also want to consider a Chicago Society site.
- We reviewed the University of Illinois directory that includes business cards, custom filters for search, and more. We considered a custom "activities" filter that would allow alums to search on current and student activities. We have these in Griffin, although the data is not as robust as it could be. This would be a way to get new data into those fields in Griffin. As part of the directory, we'll need a design for the floating cards and for the panels.
- Finally, we got a demo of a new feature - which is mobile sites that now come standard with every node. This means that for every club we launch, there will automatically be a corresponding mobile site (not an application, just a device-friendly interface to the existing site). This is very exciting and will be a plus with our alumni.
NEXT STEPS:
Formal kick-off will take place after July 1.
We added Bridget Krause to the core team to overlap with Renee Finnell.
This meeting was primarily to introduce all the members of the core working team to each other, but some interesting points were made.
- There are roughly 25 active domestic regional clubs, still under 50 with the international team thrown in. There are 5 frontline staff dedicated to alumni clubs.
- We must deliver on alumni managed sites, event registrations, communications, and reports. This product will change the way we work with alums so there is concern about how we roll it out.
- Currently, a lot of staff time is spent looking up IDs for degree information for registered alumni. We expect that the AM tool will facilitate that. Also, events information doesn't feed into Griffin so it makes using it tricky.
- Staff communicate with club managers via bi-monthly leadership calls, and posting and sharing content via email. There is also a larger annual training (Volunteer Caucus).
- Getting access to the alumni directory and making sure alumni can find each other is very important; profile searching could be more user friendly, there could be a more robust search engine, they would like to see who is coming to events, it is currently difficult for people to be members of more than one list; also communication preferences are difficult to manage
- In the Pilot program, behavioral considerations are as important as technological considerations.
- Tier 1 groups are LA, SF, Chi, DC, NY, Boston. SF and DC have their own bank accounts. The mid-tier groups are happy with the University providing some of the service for them.
- The vendor points out that the components of a successful pilot are behavior, marketing, and administering. We talked through 2 key tools: the support mechanism and the PGP (policy, guide, and procedures). Clubs usually have 2 head administrators who are able to interact with the support queue for their club. Support requests can be technically related or they can be questions about other alumni services. If the club administrator can't answer the question, they escalate the problem to the University staff. If it's something the staff can't handle (usually a tech issue or feature request) then they escalate to AlumniMagnet staff. The PGP document is something we might want to get the ABG involved in creating or considering. The vendor will share with us some documents that other clients have used to get started. This is the "contract" between the University and the club manager.
- The vendor talked to us about using these sites for things other than clubs. For example, Bridget Krause could host a Volunteer Manager / Officer's Lounge type forum. We might also want to consider a Chicago Society site.
- We reviewed the University of Illinois directory that includes business cards, custom filters for search, and more. We considered a custom "activities" filter that would allow alums to search on current and student activities. We have these in Griffin, although the data is not as robust as it could be. This would be a way to get new data into those fields in Griffin. As part of the directory, we'll need a design for the floating cards and for the panels.
- Finally, we got a demo of a new feature - which is mobile sites that now come standard with every node. This means that for every club we launch, there will automatically be a corresponding mobile site (not an application, just a device-friendly interface to the existing site). This is very exciting and will be a plus with our alumni.
NEXT STEPS:
Formal kick-off will take place after July 1.
We added Bridget Krause to the core team to overlap with Renee Finnell.
