Ning sites for alumni

[Jim Robertson]

Is anyone using Ning as a place for your university alumni to network? Site examples? Lessons learned? Pros? Cons?

[Cliff Jenkins]

Yes we (College of Mount St. Joseph) are but I've set it to private (username/password protect).

The adoption rate has been slow to say the least. It seems that there is a really technical divide between marketing/IT/graphic design and the rest of the college campus including alumni relations.
Until three months ago the alumni department didn't have email address for their alumni (another matter).

The interest is there especially from new alumni. It just seems like everyone is afraid of technology. If you decide to go the Ning route I'd like to hear how it's going for you.

[Omega Goodwin]

I've set up one for internal student-focused group for RMIT university.
Pros:
free
unlike facebook, it lets you upload word docs and other files
easy to use
restrict who can and cant join

cons
some people have had trouble joining, based on the type of browser they are using.
google ads - competitors ads might appear!
It's yet ANOTHER place people have to sign up to....

hope this helps,

omega

[Stephen Bell]

Note that if you pay Ning a few dollars a month, you can have an advertising-free site (or set up your own ad service, though that seems a little strange in this context).

[Michael Fienen]

We are not. Currently, our alumni association is contracted with a 3rd party company for their portal site. However we are beginning to look into mostly duplicating what they have right in our CMS.

[Erik Hagen]

I've been thinking about using Ning for this purpose. I've not found a 3rd party company yet that knows what its doing when it comes to this, but we don't have the resources to develop something in house, though that would be ideal. I'm also looking at Elgg, an open source option - it looks very interesting.

The big benefit our Alumni dept is looking for is a way to help keep their alumni database up to date with current contact information. I don't know if a Ning site would help them with that.

[Stephanie M. Cockerl]

I have a Ning site for my sorority alumnae association. I have it password protected, but one thing that I have learned is that a private site doesn't have the same weight today as it did several years ago. More people are grouping up in social media and don't see the need to get one more account and remember one more password.

[John Wilson]

We are as well, though it is still fairly new. I was told today we were getting 100/week new subscribers. It is a great service, but I often wonder just how much of a dependency on social networking platforms we ought to have.

[Mitesh Bhatt]

I am a Doctor - General Surgeon & have created site for Government Medical College Surat Alumni - This site is like Facebook and can be joined on invitation only .
This site is for students who have passed from Government Medical College Surat of Gujarat State in India.