Dive Brief:
- The New York Times reports that “a handful” of new companies are using tools that use the social media posts of graduated students to help colleges target alumni likely to make donations or perform volunteer work for their schools.
- One such company is Boston's EverTrue, launched in 2010, which uses alumni interactions with their colleges on Facebook and their LinkedIn profiles to identify prospective donors.
- Another example, Graduway, is a startup that builds private social networking sites to help higher education institutions connect with alumni.
Dive Insight:
The startups are attracting investor interest: Graduway has raised $2 million, including funding from cosmetics tycoon Ronald Lauder. EverTrue’s investors include Bain Capital, which provided $10 million of the $14.6 million total investments in the company. Likewise, the social media data mining businesses are also raising privacy concerns with some critics.
One Graduway client is Tulane University, which had 4,000 graduates connect to its Graduway-designed networking site in nine months, 77% of whom signed up become mentors. Boston University is one of about 300 EverTrue higher ed clients.