Looking Ahead to the New Alumni Directory

Looking Ahead to the New Alumni Directory

When life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade — or, in Scouting circles, lemon-flavored bug juice! Scouting Alumni and Friends was given some lemons in 2018 when database vendor Blackbaud announced plans to shut down its Sphere service technology platform, which the BSA’s alumni group has long used, on December 31. “Sphere is sunsetting at the end of the year, and we’ve been working feverishly since the announcement to get a replacement for that,” says Associate Director Ryan Larson.

While the BSA could have gone with another Blackbaud product, or with a solution from another vendor, officials decided instead to bring the database in-house, building a new directory that will work hand-in-hand with Scouting’s main database. “The silver lining to this is that we will have greater integration with the existing systems of the BSA,” Larson says. “You will no longer have to remember a Blackbaud username and password. Instead, you’ll be able to use your My.Scouting username, and the system will know who you are and will be able to assign you the correct roles and permissions.”

Of course, that’s a bit easier said than done, as any computer programmer can attest. The current database includes some three million records, and the data needed to be scrubbed before being moved. That process, along with the time required to build custom capabilities, means the new directory will roll out in phases, starting in the first quarter of 2019.

The first priority is to allow councils to download lists of their alumni, lists that can be sorted and manipulated for mailings and outreach. The second priority is to make it easy for alumni to join not just Scouting Alumni and Friends but also their local council alumni groups. “If your council has a camp alumni association, it too could reside on our platform and run its membership there,” Larson said. “An alumnus could pay for his membership through our site, and the fee would flow automatically to the local council.” (That’s a powerful capability for grassroots alumni groups that don’t have the resources to build or buy database solutions.)

Integration with the BSA’s main database will also reduce redundancy and incorrect records. Update your address in one place, for example, and it will automatically be updated everywhere else.

But Larson has even bigger plans for down the road. For example, he wants to add an “in-mail” feature like LinkedIn offers to let alumni connect with each other without initially sharing email addresses or other contact information. There will also be the ability to create greater integration with Scoutbook, the BSA’s advancement-tracking app, so alumni can see their entire list of Scouting achievements well into adulthood.

Larson praised Vijay Challa, the BSA’s chief technology officer, for his support of the new database system. “He’s totally caught the vision of it,” he says. “He’s really supported what we are trying to do to ensure alumni remain engaged.”

Challa, meanwhile, explained why the project was important to his team. “Our goal is to create one record of truth and no longer have multiple records that don’t connect to one another,” he says. “In addition, we have been able to apply what we have learned with the STEM Scouts and the new My.Scouting online registration system to this project and vice versa.”

“We’ll continue to add functionality based on what alumni say they want,” Larson says. “No longer will we be limited by what a vendor chooses to provide. That’s a big deal.”

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