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Author: Palms

Dan Spiegel, a 2003 Stanford University graduate who works at an architecture firm in New York, says he regularly checks Stanford's alumni networking site, called inCircle. The site includes a visual representation of all the alums Mr. Spiegel is connected to -- his immediate friends, and their friends, and so on. The site invites alums to network to find a job, venture-capital funding, or even a date.

"I haven't posted on [inCircle] yet, but plan to when I need to get somebody to split my apartment in September," Mr. Spiegel says. "It's a bit of a prescreening process."

Schools hope new networking services will help them more easily keep tabs on alumni, and keep graduates more connected to the school. Though some of the services aren't cheap -- adding a networking site can cost as much as $10,000 a year -- maintaining a close bond with alumni can increase donations and volunteering.

"The more alumni you have engaged in your community, the more you have them interacting with each other, a better mobilized base they are for the institution in general," says Colleen Nielsen of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education in Washington that works with alumni professionals.

Start-up Affinity Engines Inc. (www.affinityengines.com) of Palo Alto, Calif., which developed Stanford's alumni-networking site, also launched a site for the University of Southern California in October. It is working on a site for the University of Michigan, expected in May.

Meanwhile, closely held networking sites Spoke Software Inc. (www.spoke.com) and LinkedIn Ltd. (www.linkedin.com) both launched products in March that could help schools create alumni networks, and Contact Network Corp. (www.contactnetworkcorp.com) has been working with business schools on networking projects for the past year. Publishing Concepts LP (www.publishingconcepts.com), a Dallas provider of alumni directories and features for alumni Web sites, says it has been approached by a number of clients asking it to develop a networking solution and is considering the idea.

"Social networking is potentially the next use of the Web," says Andrew Shaindlin, executive director of the Caltech Alumni Association at the California Institute of Technology. In March, he made an online presentation to alumni officers about the use of networking services to keep graduates together.

Mr. Shaindlin says that while traditional methods of staying in contact with alumni have made it easier for them to reach other alumni that they already know, networking services provide a way to meet new people.

It is too soon to say how much of an impact the increased online efforts will have on donations. Because many of online features of alumni Web sites tend to be geared toward younger graduates, schools won't see the return until those alumni are older and have more money to give.

"I think they are looking at [the Internet] as a longer-term investment," says Nicole Wallace, an assistant editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy of Washington. "They are looking far ahead to when people who are in their 20s or 30s are major donors."

Alumni giving is largely tied to the state of the economy. After dropping 14% in 2002, alumni giving to colleges and universities rose 12% to $6.6 billion in 2003, according to the Council for Aid to Education, a nonprofit group in New York.

Some schools have also started taking in online donations, but such giving remains a very small part of overall gifts. Stanford University, for example, took in about $1 million in online donations in both 2002 and 2003. By comparison, it raised $486 million overall in 2002.

Schools are increasingly moving their alumni communications online, both to keep costs down and keep up with the methods alumni like to use to communicate. Since 2001, for example, the University of Michigan has sent out a weekly e-TrueBlue newsletter every Friday to about 45,000 graduates. In August, the school will discontinue its twice-a-year print version of the newsletter. The cost for one print issue is about $40,000, says Catherine Serrin Niekro, director of marketing and communications for the school's alumni association.

Some networking sites are offering their services for free to schools, and some would link students to people who aren't fellow graduates. Spoke Software and LinkedIn are both offering their services for free in hopes of growing their networks. A Yale University alumni club in the San Francisco Bay Area has signed up with Spoke, of Palo Alto, Calif., but so far the university is waiting to gauge demand before it endorses a service.

Some schools, like Stanford prefer to limit their networking sites to the school's graduates. "InCircle isn't Friendster," says Gabriela Tovar, director of online services for Stanford Alumni Association. "In order for the community to really be successful and feel like a safe place, we needed to keep it limited."

Since it launched in January 2003, about 36,000 Stanford grads have logged in the networking site at least once, says Ms. Tovar. The school hasn't tracked whether the new system has had an effect on donations, but Affinity Engines has talked with Stanford about how its networking service could help boost gifts. The company says one example would be for alumni to receive letters detailing how much their linked "friends" gave, which Affinity calls a "bandwagon technique."

The site has also helped Stanford keep track of graduates, which can be a daunting task, particularly for younger grads who move frequently. Ms. Tovar says 8,000 graduates used the service just in the first three months to update their contact information.

Harris Internet Services, a unit of Bernard C. Harris Publishing Company Inc. of Purchase, N.Y., which has been offering online directories and other features since 1996, has looked at social networking but is on the sidelines for now.

"A lot of people believe it may be the next way [to stay connected with alumni]," says Paul Gangi, president of Harris Internet Services. "But I've seen a dozen things that were supposed to be the next trend over the past seven or eight years."