Alumni contact information and databases

Alumni contact information/databases
How do chapters keep track of alumni? How do they keep track of their current information? How do they find information for older alumni?

Database
A database should be maintained on a regular basis. Make changes as brothers graduate, change addresses/ e-mail addresses, or become decease. Provide this information to the National Office once a semester. If possible set up a database on your chapter's website that allows your Alumni to login and edit their own personal information. Whenever you are allowing for unique user IDs and passwords, make sure there is an easy way for them to retrieve or reset this information. If that is not possible, publish your Alumni's contact information so that they can see if they need to update their information with the chapter.

Parent's Address
Collecting contact information of members of your chapter and their home or parent's address, while they are still undergraduates is a good practice. While your chapter's members may change addresses frequently in college and after they graduate, their permanent or parent's address is more likely to stay the same.

Locating "Lost Alumni"
When publications are returned because or wrong addresses or alumni are otherwise declared "lost," use the following tips to secure corrections:

• Work with the university/college alumni office. They often have extensive files on alumni and have the personal to help locate lost graduates.
• Publish the names of all lost alumni in every newsletter. Send the names out to the alumni listserv if the chapter maintains one.
• If the lost brother has a "last known address," check with that local post office to see if he/she has left a forwarding address.
• Use ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED on all correspondence (check with your local post office for particulars of position on envelope, etc.).
• Contact the National Headquarters. The National Headquarters maintains address records for every member of the fraternity. These records can be sorted in several different ways: by chapter, class year, geographic area, or alphabetically. Although the address in the national database may not be the current address of the alumnus/a, it may be his/her parents' address. You may also have Alumni who keep in touch with the office but for one reason or another have lost touch with the chapter.
• Check the white pages on the internet; [whitepages]
• Check the classmates on the internet; [classmates], registration required
• Use social networking sites such as; [Facebook], [MySpace]. Some of these sites let you search by name or email address.

Locating Lost Alumni
Alpha Lambda

Alpha Lambda had lost contact with one of their founders over a period of about ten years. An optimistic chapter member decided he wanted to find them and bring them back to an upcoming Founder's Day banquet. There was some information that lead the chapter to believe the last location of this Alumni was possibly in the Lancaster area. After doing some simple whitepages search in the area, they had a short list of matching names. One by one they called each person, and sure enough within just a few days of deciding they wanted to find their founder they had tracked him down and convinced him to come to the upcoming Founder's Day celebration. He has since become active with the chapter, attending several events a year and even establishing a chapter scholarship.