Board Management Tools - GIJP Technology Program eNewsletter

Tamarack Camps (Michigan) has found Facebook to be the most beneficial tool for finding lost alumni. Initially, they found a number of Tamarack Camps alumni groups already meeting and creating groups in Facebook. Eventually, Carly Leipsitz, the Development Associate at Tamarack Camps, created an official Tamarack Camps Facebook Group, which now has over 600 members. In addition, other official and unofficial Facebook groups have "split off" from the original group. For example, Tamarack Camps was once comprised of two separate properties. For a variety of reasons, they were forced to sell off the Brighton property in the late 1990's. Many alumni and staff were very unhappy with the difficult decision and connections with many of those people were lost. However, the former Director of the Brighton camp is now the Administrator for a Tamarack Camps Brighton Facebook group and those alumni are actively reconnecting with the camp.

In particular, Carly uses Facebook to promote events. For example, she promoted their Alumni Family Fun day on the various Facebook Groups (as well as more traditional channels) and welcomed 1400 alumni and family members the Sunday before camp last year for a highly successful event. In addition, last year they promoted an Alumni bar night over the Thanksgiving holiday on Facebook and attracted more than 200 alumni! They are recreating this event this year and inviting the Brighton Facebook community to a special event beforehand as well.

The camp also set up an event in New York City that the Camp Director, Development Director, and other staff would attend. However, they had limited data on alumni who had relocated to New York. They created an event in Facebook and asked their friends and contacts in the various Facebook groups to get the word out to all of their friends to reach as many New York alumni as possible. Eventually, Tamarack Camps was able to find 40 new alumni in the New York City area to attend the event.

Because of the success of the NY event, Carly also planned a similar Chicago bar night for alumni on Facebook. As Carly told us, "It was a HUGE success. We had 50 alumni come; (they) were so happy to be reconnected with Tamarack, they wouldn't leave! We had the room until 11 PM and most of the alumni were still there..a large group (of alums) went to the bar downstairs and hung out (even later). Everyone had a great time and can't wait till we do it again next year!"

The biggest frustration Carly has experienced with Facebook is the fact that she cannot simply access people's contact information to include in their alumni database so they can receive the eNewsletter and Newsletter mailings. Carly has sent emails within Facebook to everyone in her group asking for their interest in specific projects (for example, joining an Alumni Committee) to try to gather contact information, but must redirect them to her email or Tamarack Camps website. In addition, the chair of her existing alumni committee has a large network of Tamarack Camps' alumni in her Facebook friends list. She is able to reconnect with those alumni and direct them to both the Tamarack Camps website to enter their information and the Tamarack Camps official group to be more involved with the online community.

Do you have any tips for finding and reconnecting with your alumni? Let us know! We are sure that others can learn from your experiences.