Frequently Asked Questions

MyAlumCircle is a department-first alumni networking platform that connects students, alumni, and faculty within their specific academic department. Unlike university-wide platforms that treat all alumni the same, MyAlumCircle is built around the academic department as the core unit -- because that is where meaningful professional relationships form.

Departments get their own private, verified alumni network with tools for mentorship, job referrals, career conversations, and engagement tracking. Students and recent graduates get direct access to alumni who share their exact academic background.

LinkedIn is a general professional network with over 1 billion users. It is broad, not deep. Finding alumni from your specific department requires filtering through millions of profiles, and there is no institutional verification or department-specific community structure.

Handshake is primarily a job platform for early-career students, focused on applications and employer recruiting. It is managed by university career centers and does not provide ongoing alumni networking or mentorship features for graduates.

Existing alumni platforms like Graduway/Gravyty (serving 2,000+ institutions), PeopleGrove (650+ institutions), and Almabase sell university-wide licenses to central administration. Department-level features, when they exist, are secondary add-ons within a broader institutional platform. No major competitor targets individual academic departments as their primary customer.

MyAlumCircle is the first platform purpose-built for department-level networking, with a pricing model that matches department budgets rather than institution-wide enterprise contracts.

Sources: Software Advice: Graduway Profile, PeopleGrove Capterra, Almabase Pricing

MyAlumCircle serves three primary groups:

• Students -- currently enrolled students who want career guidance, mentorship, and connections within their field of study.
• Alumni -- graduates looking to mentor students from their own department, hire from their alma mater, or reconnect with department peers.
• Departments -- academic departments that want to strengthen alumni engagement, improve student career outcomes, and track meaningful engagement metrics.

When you join MyAlumCircle, you select your academic department (or departments, if you have multiple majors). You are then connected with alumni and students from that same department -- not the entire university, not every department -- just the one that matches your academic background.

This means all conversations start from a shared foundation: you studied the same curriculum, likely know the same faculty, and understand the same professional landscape. A computer science sophomore connects with a CS alumnus who can speak to specific courses, professors, and career paths. A construction management student finds mentors who graduated from the same ACCE-accredited program.

Academic research supports this approach. Crowe (2021) found that a departmental climate fostering student research, faculty mentorship, and professional development significantly increases sense of belonging and perceived faculty support -- both recognized precursors to alumni engagement.

Source: Crowe (2021), “Creating a Departmental Climate that Increases a Student’s Sense of Belonging,” Innovative Higher Education

We use a multi-layered verification process:

• Institutional email verification -- alumni verify using their university-issued email or alumni forwarding address.
• Department confirmation -- degree and graduation year are cross-referenced against department records where available.
• LinkedIn profile matching -- optional sync to confirm professional identity.
• Faculty and peer verification -- department administrators and faculty can manually verify alumni they know personally.

Verified alumni receive a badge on their profile, making it easy for students to trust who they are connecting with.

Yes. MyAlumCircle is designed for both current students and alumni. Students join using their university email address and select their major department. Alumni join the same way -- using their alumni email or by verifying their degree.

The platform gives each group tailored views: students see mentorship opportunities and career guidance; alumni see ways to give back and connect with other alumni in their field. Department administrators see engagement analytics and can facilitate connections.

MyAlumCircle facilitates mentorship through structured matching based on department, career interests, industry, and availability. Students can browse verified alumni who have opted into mentorship, or request a match based on their career goals.

The impact of structured mentorship is well documented. According to Mentor Collective survey data, students who participated in mentorship programs saw career exploration behaviors increase by 13-16% and professional skills confidence improve by 19-22% across networking, job search strategies, and career planning.

Additionally, the IFC Vitae 2024 database found that 74% of surveyed graduates are eager to support students with career guidance, yet only 59% of institutions have a formal program to harness this willingness. MyAlumCircle bridges this gap by making it easy for alumni to offer mentorship without administrative overhead.

Sources: Mentor Collective Mentorship Program Outcomes, IFC Vitae: Alumni Engagement Strategies That Work

University-wide alumni platforms serve the central advancement office first. Their primary goal is fundraising, event management, and institution-level engagement tracking. This leaves departments with a generic tool that does not address their specific needs: student mentorship, internship placement, and career networking within the field.

The data confirms the gap. According to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) 2024 Insights on Alumni Engagement survey of 394 institutions across 19 countries covering 60 million contactable alumni, the global alumni engagement rate stands at just 19.7%. For communications specifically, only 15.4% of alumni engage. Most university-wide platforms are not moving the needle.

Department-level platforms drive higher relevance because alumni feel more connected to their academic department than to the abstract institution. Research by Maulana et al. (2024) found that alumni connectedness -- relatability, dependency, and sense of community built from student experiences -- is the primary predictor of alumni intention to contribute. Souto-Otero (2024) showed that students who experienced relational engagement at the department level are more likely to give back than those with transactional institution-level relationships.

Sources: CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement 2024, Maulana et al. (2024), Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, Souto-Otero (2024), British Journal of Educational Studies

MyAlumCircle uses a department-level subscription model, priced far below enterprise alumni platforms. Unlike solutions such as ToucanTech ($8,000/year), Almabase (from $3,000/year), or PeopleGrove (custom institution-wide licensing), our pricing is designed for departmental budgets -- typically $500 to $5,000 per year depending on department size and feature needs.

This means departments can purchase directly without the 6- to 18-month RFP cycle and VP-level approvals required for enterprise platforms. For detailed pricing, visit our pricing page.

Sources: ToucanTech Software Advice, Almabase Pricing Plans, PeopleGrove Capterra

Most departments can go live within 1-2 weeks. Setup involves:

• Creating the department profile and uploading basic program information.
• Importing alumni data (or inviting alumni to self-register).
• Configuring verification rules and moderation preferences.
• Training one department liaison (typically 30 minutes).

No IT integration is required to start. The platform works as a standalone service that can optionally integrate with existing CRM systems later.

MyAlumCircle works for any academic department that wants to engage its alumni. Our initial focus includes construction management, engineering, computer science, and professional programs where alumni mentorship directly impacts student career outcomes.

Research on construction management departments illustrates the opportunity. The American Council for Construction Education (ACCE) accredits over 70 baccalaureate programs in the United States alone. Major programs include Texas A&M’s Department of Construction Science (~1,600 undergraduates) and Louisiana State University’s Bert S. Turner Department of Construction Management (~1,900+ total enrollment).

ACCE Standard 8.2.1 requires accredited departments to maintain an active Industry Advisory Board, yet most construction management departments lack dedicated staff for alumni and external relations management -- a gap MyAlumCircle fills.

Source: American Council for Construction Education

The honest answer: most alumni do not engage with current platforms. According to the CASE 2024 Insights on Alumni Engagement survey of 394 institutions across 19 countries covering 60 million contactable alumni, the global alumni engagement rate across all four measured modes (communication, experiential, philanthropy, and volunteering) is just 19.7% -- meaning roughly 80% of alumni are not engaging at all.

Broken down by mode:

• Communication: 15.4%
• Experiential (events, programs): 6.1%
• Philanthropy (giving): 4.7% (declining)
• Volunteering: 1.2%

The industry has plateaued at ~19-20% for years, suggesting current institution-wide tools are not solving the engagement problem. MyAlumCircle takes a fundamentally different approach -- organizing around the department where alumni already feel the strongest connection.

Source: CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement 2024

The research suggests a massive gap between what alumni want and what they currently get.

The Strada-Gallup Alumni Survey of 5,107 college graduates found that only 9%found their alumni network “helpful” or “very helpful” in their job search. Meanwhile, 22% found it unhelpful, and 69% were apathetic. Even at Top 50 universities, only 16% found their network helpful.

A separate Gallup College Alumni poll found that nearly half of recent graduates cited networking skills as the #1 skill gap in their education -- the area where they felt least confident by a wide margin.

When institutions invest in structured networking platforms, results improve dramatically. PeopleGrove’s 2024 Impact Report found that 58% of alumni using their platform found their alumni network helpful for the job market -- compared to just 9% nationally. Additionally, 62% would use their alumni network to make a career change, and 52% said they are more likely to volunteer or give back due to the platform.

Sources: Forbes: Let’s Tap The Real Power Of College Alumni (Strada-Gallup), SmartBrief: Teaching Networking Skills Is an Equity Imperative (Gallup), PeopleGrove 2024 Impact Report

Academic research consistently finds that the strongest predictor of alumni engagement is the quality of relationships formed during the student’s time in their department-- not the institution’s brand.

Johnson (2023), in a doctoral study using NSSE data, found that relationships with faculty and administrative personnel were extremely significant (p ≤ .001) predictors of alumni giving participation. Working with faculty on activities other than coursework was significantly correlated with both giving participation and giving amount.

Gaylord & Kelleher (2019) surveyed 664 millennial alumni and found that faculty engagement outside class, career support, and degree utility were all significantly related to degree satisfaction and likelihood of giving.

Maulana et al. (2024) proposed a giving behavior model centered on alumni connectedness as the primary predictor -- a multidimensional construct of relatability, dependency, and sense of community. These factors are strongest at the departmental level, where students form their closest academic relationships.

Sources: Johnson (2023), UTC Scholar, Gaylord & Kelleher (2019), Journal of Education Advancement & Marketing, Maulana et al. (2024), Journal of Marketing for Higher Education

MyAlumCircle data is stored on secure cloud infrastructure hosted in the United States. We use industry-standard encryption at rest and in transit (TLS 1.3). Access to production data is restricted to essential personnel and logged for audit purposes.

Each department’s data is logically isolated, ensuring that alumni information from one department is never visible to another department without explicit consent.

Yes. MyAlumCircle is designed to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for European users, as well as applicable U.S. state privacy laws including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Key measures include:

• Right to access, rectify, and delete personal data.
• Data processing agreements available upon request.
• Transparent data collection and usage policies.
• Opt-in consent for communications and data sharing.

See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Yes. MyAlumCircle provides self-service data export tools for departments. You can export your alumni directory, engagement analytics, and communications history in standard formats (CSV, JSON) at any time. There are no data lock-in terms in our agreements.

Department administrators can initiate exports from their settings panel, with data typically available for download within 24 hours.