Alumni networking, once relegated mainly to reunions and Homecoming, is being transformed as more alumni join social-networking sites like Facebook - and schools are paying attention.
Alumni clubs, which help alumni within a certain geographic region connect, are discovering that the Internet is a faster and more interactive way to reach alumni, especially those who have graduated since Facebook opened to Penn in 2004.
Denise Froatz, the athletic committee co-chairwoman of the Penn NYC Club, said her club has begun using the Internet to "get young alumni more involved."
"With Facebook, alumni are already sort of connected to each other," she said. The PennNYC Facebook group that Froatz started has grown to over 650 people.
Andrew Rosenthal, present of the Penn Alumni Club of Philadelphia and a 2006 College graduate, said Internet resources compliment the club's in-person activities.
The organization has a Facebook group, with more than 300 members, and an interactive Web site, with about 2,000 members, Rosenthal said.
Still, because most Facebook users are young alumni, Froatz said there has been some difficulty connecting with older alumni via Facebook.
For instance, when she first pitched a Facebook group as a way to attract younger alumni, "I had to explain what Facebook was," to some alumni, Froatz said.
"I don't know if there's a generation gap, per se, but we definitely use different forms of communication to reach different forms of alumni," Rosenthal said, adding that to contact "Old Guard" alumni - those who graduated more than 50 years ago - the club uses only paper-based communication.
Still, even those communications have been reinvented with the Internet.
Rosenthal said he uses QuakerNet, Penn's online alumni-linking portal, to find current addresses for alumni who would prefer mailed notices.
The Web site, run by the University, opened in 2000 and currently has over 72,000 registered users.
The feedback from alumni has been extremely positive, said Hoopes Wampler, Penn's assistant vice president for alumni relations.
"It's really a portal for all our regional as well as our on-campus information," he said, adding that both alumni and students have access to QuakerNet, where they can register for events held at Penn, like Homecoming festivities, and career-networking tools, like the Penn Alumni Career Network.
QuakerNet is not a social-networking site, but it has facilitated the growth of the Philadelphia regional club's Web site, which has been expanding in the last few years, Rosenthal said.
Both Froatz and Rosenthal said their clubs' Web sites had been redone recently to become more interactive for members.
Since he joined the club in 2006, Rosenthal said, "our club is now more dynamic, more active, more inclusive and more diverse than it's ever been," as a result of the ability to reach out to alumni through social-networking groups.
