Online Communities
Virtually everything constituents need to connect. On demand.
If yours is like most organizations today, your constituents want more—better access to you and one another, as well as a wide range of “on demand” services. The Internet provides the best possible environment to meet the unique, evolving needs of your alumni and members. And Harris Connect offers the best possible selection of affordable, fully scalable online solutions that help you take advantage of the Internet to manage and build relationships—and community—more effectively.
A sampling of our integrated solutions that strengthen your alumni or member base include:
Online Directory.
Our pre-populated, secure Online Directory is the core of constituent Internet services for most institutions and groups, enabling alums/members to connect easily with their alma mater or association and with each other. The Online Directory provides sophisticated networking capabilities for your constituents, increases participation through its viral marketing features, and lets you capture additional data and report on activity and usage. The most scalable directory in the higher education and association market today, it gives both you and your constituents complete control over profile content. With more data fields available, your constituents will be able to network beyond basic address location and company name to areas such as clubs, athletics, schools, hobbies, professional affiliations, Greek organizations and more.
Discussion Groups.
Participate in group discussions with your constituents or enable them to talk to each other through Web or email postings. Your institution or organization can offer one or more groups for subscription, and your users can choose which groups they want to subscribe to and how they want to receive and send messages to other group subscribers. Your administrators control the subscription and posting policies, in addition to other group related discussion controls.
Class and Member Notes.
Leverage one of the most successful and engaging offline activities—class notes—to attract and retain alumni/members. Alumni/members can enter a note (or just fill out a few fields and the software will generate the note for them automatically) as well as include photos. You determine the selection of notes that alumni/members see based on criteria such as class year, major, or campus—personalizing the experience for your alumni/members. Since Class and Member Notes are tied to each individual’s Online Directory profile, they help you build deeper profiles for alumni/members and a more comprehensive database for you.
Permanent Email.
Give your constituents an email address that never changes and that is affiliated with your institution or organization. Even when they change jobs or email providers, their permanent email addresses will remain the same. Harris Connect hosts this service, so it is supported—as with all other Harris Connect applications—with full redundancy. Unlike most other vendors, we also provide multiple levels of SPAM protection.
And more…
Many other Harris Connect Internet solutions help you build online communities. They include social and networking tools such as the Business Exchange which allows your constituents to promote their businesses, products or services by creating their own online community “yellow pages” ad, and the Career Center which gives your constituents access to both job and resume databanks.
Online Research Surveys offer a cost-efficient, quick, and easy way to obtain specific information from targeted groups of your constituents, facilitate online elections and create quick polls and surveys.
