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Alumni foundations used to have it good. Sure, it wasn’t always easy keeping track of alumni through their various moves and careers, but for a long time foundations were able to control their “brand” and messages through the traditional vehicles: newsletters, school magazines, email newsletters, and direct mail. The only source of information (and the only way to contact their former classmates) was through the school itself.

Then along came Facebook.

Now former classmates are connecting with long-lost friends without any formal assistance. Now students are leaving their high schools and colleges with their own extensive network of friends. They are organizing get-togethers, fund-raisers, and even reunions themselves—without the assistance of any alumni foundation. But by eliminating the schools’ representation at these events, the schools are losing their own ability to foster the loyalty that they need to raise money.

Now foundations are forced to think about new ways to stay in front of their alumni, and they’re likely going to have to take an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” stance when it comes to social networks.
“It’s going to affect donations,” says Andrew Shaindlin, executive director of the Caltech Alumni Association and blogger at Alumni Futures. “We’ve lost our monopoly over the data on how to communicate with schoolmates. We need to step back and figure out how to remain relevant, because there may be some point three or five or seven years from now when we’re going to hold a reunion and almost nobody is going to sign up.”

The bright side? Facebook users already tend to be more enthusiastic about causes, and the potential ease to keep in touch with them (and the ease with which they can now donate) is a major plus. Also, over time class alumni lists used to slowly diminish in numbers—and now (at least theoretically) those numbers could increase, as those alumni using social networks eventually find their classmates. And don’t diminish the importance of that—alumni will now be actively searching to find their class groups—instead of the other way around. This doesn’t spell the end of reunions and alumni foundations as we know them—people will always be nostalgic—but it does spell an end to the traditional ways of reaching alumni, organizing events, and raising funds.

Alumni foundations—like many organizations—need to be seeking advice now about how to remain relevant in the face(book) of an ever-changing communications landscape.