AIESEC UK Alumni - Communication Working Group - 4 Sep 2008

AIESEC UK Alumni Association Communication Working Group 4 th September 2008 Dan Cunningham & Carl Petrou Communication … if it’s going to be, it’s up to us!

Our Purpose

Investigate and determine:

How to effectively communication to our members

How to gather and share data on members

How to maintain information on our members

Develop and maintain:

A way to connect and re-connect with one another

Discussion: What do we want/need from our communication platform(s)?

What do we need from our communication platform(s)? 6. Professional networking Finding professional contacts, job opportunities, etc. 7. External Web Site Publicising the activities of the association 5. Social networking (Re-)connecting users based on social connections 4. Events Management Calendar of events and activities, sending invites and reminders 3. Newsletter / Announcements From the Association / AIESEC – ideally with ability to send to a subset of users (e.g. London, recent graduates, job-seekers, etc.) 2. Working Group Communications Collaboration, discussion, sharing documents, publicising activities and minutes 1. Membership Database Keeping an up-to-date database of all members

Some Key Principles

Keep it simple!

Good Quality Communication Concise, clear, prompt, wide audience

Democratic Communication Everyone should feel they have a voice and can add their input

Don’t re-invent the wheel We will favour the use of pre-existing tools over creating our own custom systems

Non-exclusionary Wherever possible, people shouldn’t have to sign up for new on-line systems or social networks.

Future-proofing It will be possible to back-up, store copies offline or export communications from whatever systems we use so that we can easily migrate to new systems that are put in place.

What do we need from our communication platform(s)? nothing? 6. Professional networking Finding professional contacts, job opportunities, etc. Currently using 7. External Web Site Publicising the activities of the association 5. Social networking (Re-)connecting users based on social connections 4. Events Management Calendar of events and activities, sending invites and reminders 3. Newsletter / Announcements From the Association / AIESEC – ideally with ability to send to a subset of users (e.g. London, recent graduates, job-seekers, etc.) 2. Working Group Communications Collaboration, discussion, sharing documents, publicising activities and minutes + e-mail list of 149 alumni 1. Membership Database Keeping an up-to-date database of all members

Our Proposal - WildApricot + 6. Professional networking Finding professional contacts, job opportunities, etc. Our Proposal 7. External Web Site Publicising the activities of the association + 5. Social networking (Re-)connecting users based on social connections + 4. Events Management Calendar of events and activities, sending invites and reminders 3. Newsletter / Announcements From the Association / AIESEC – ideally with ability to send to a subset of users (e.g. London, recent graduates, job-seekers, etc.) 2. Working Group Communications Collaboration, discussion, sharing documents, publicising activities and minutes 1. Membership Database Keeping an up-to-date database of all members

A powerful web-based membership database and website system

Membership Application and Payment

Detailed User Profiles

Fully Searchable Members Database

Send HTML e-mails to any subset of members

Discussion Forums

Web Page Editing

Events Management

Pricing

With 100+ members, that’s only between 30p and £1.50 per member per year !

Not bad for access to a very powerful and easy-to-use communication and networking platform

(that doesn’t require anyone with technical skills to spend time re-inventing the wheel!)

(up to 50 members (1 admin) is free so we can test it out)

£600.00 £50.00 2000 £300.00 £25.00 500 £150.00 £12.50 250 = Annual Price Monthly Price Number of members

Our Proposal – WildApricot

+

One integrated system for everything

Very comprehensive searchable members database with rich profiles and custom fields – added value for alumni in terms of networking

Ability to send e-mails / newsletters to subsets of users based on any search criteria (e.g. city, sector, membership level)

No technical skills required by anybody

-

New system

Requires small membership fee

Discussion…

Appendices and Background Research

Contender 1: Facebook

Key group features:

Members list

Group messages

Event invitations and reminders

Discussion boards

+

Unbeatable for viral marketing of events, attracting new alumni, etc!

Already have 369+ members on our groups

-

Not everyone is on it (or wants to be!) (especially older alumni)

E-mail list cannot be exported

Contender 2: LinkedIn

Key group features:

Members list

Creates loose connection between members (so that fellow members show up in LinkedIn people searches)

Discussions (very basic)

+

Very popular and good for professional networking

Very rich user profiles (complete career history, recommendations, etc.)

-

Each member needs to be approved

Contender 3: Google Group

Key group features:

Fully-featured mailing list

Members list which can be exported

+

Anyone can send e-mails to the list

Members list can be exported

-

No way to send e-mails to a subset of the list (well, we could set up several different groups and have people join those they are interested in)

Contender 4: Google Site

Key group features:

Collaborative web editing (like a wiki, really easy)

Collaborators can subscribe to site / page updates

Integration with Google Calendar and Google Docs

+

Very easy and non-technical to edit web pages

Visible to the world

Great for a limited size group of editors

-

No fully-featured membership database

Each user needs to be manually added

Cannot be used to send e-mails / announcements

No access control / private members section

Proposal 1 – The Combo 6. Professional networking Finding professional contacts, job opportunities, etc. Proposal 1 – The Combo 7. External Web Site Publicising the activities of the association 5. Social networking (Re-)connecting users based on social connections 4. Events Management Calendar of events and activities, sending invites and reminders 3. Newsletter / Announcements From the Association / AIESEC – ideally with ability to send to a subset of users (e.g. London, recent graduates, job-seekers, etc.) 2. Working Group Communications Collaboration, discussion, sharing documents, publicising activities and minutes 1. Membership Database Keeping an up-to-date database of all members

Proposal 1 – The Combo

+

Uses existing tools that people are familiar and happy with

Completely free

-

Wouldn’t have a comprehensive membership database, just a basic list of names and e-mail addresses

People might get confused

Proposal 1b – The Combo with basic PHP members database <PHP> <PHP> <PHP> <PHP> 6. Professional networking Finding professional contacts, job opportunities, etc. Proposal 1b – The Combo with PHP 7. External Web Site Publicising the activities of the association 5. Social networking (Re-)connecting users based on social connections 4. Events Management Calendar of events and activities, sending invites and reminders 3. Newsletter / Announcements From the Association / AIESEC – ideally with ability to send to a subset of users (e.g. London, recent graduates, job-seekers, etc.) 2. Working Group Communications Collaboration, discussion, sharing documents, publicising activities and minutes 1. Membership Database Keeping an up-to-date database of all members

Proposal 1b – The Combo with basic PHP members database