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The ARCH Project is an experimental resource designed to help educational, fraternal and professional institutions relocate lost alumni. (We use the masculine forms 'alumnus' and 'alumni' throughout for simplicity, without disrespect for women in higher education.)
In brief, The ARCH Project is based on the premise that many colleges and universities, grad schools, fraternities and sororities, and professional organizations, have overlapping populations. A single individual may attend college, join a fraternity or sorority, and/or a collegiate professional organization, then go on to grad school. After the individual graduates, all of these organizations attempt to maintain contact with him or her, often expending significant amounts of time and money in the process. The ARCH Project will provide a way for qualified institutions to share information on alumni, reducing the time and expense required to maintain contact with them. Although information on alumni at the ARCH site will be processed in a number of different ways, the long-term objective will be to create the world's first 'distributed database' of alumni from hundreds of institutions across North America. This means that primary info on alumni will remain in the databases of each parent institution, and the ARCH site will provide a 'portal' to allow qualified institutions to share data on mutual constituents: individuals who are alumni of more than one institution, whether undergraduate, postgraduate, fraternal or professional. We estimate that as many as 3 million alumni do not have a good address on file at their undergraduate college or university; up to 1 million members of fraternal and professional organizations are considered 'lost' by their headquarters offices; and perhaps another 1 million have no current address on file at their graduate school. Combined, these figures total up to 5 million lost alumni across the continent. While there are many intangible reasons to relocate lost alumni, there is an immediate material benefit as well: if only 20% of the estimated 5 million lost alumni were relocated, as many as 1 million prospective donors could be added to the active mailing lists of their parent institutions. If only 2% of 1 million relocated alumni became donors to their school, fraternity or professional group, with an average gift of $44, an additional $880,000 in alumni support would be available to these institutions within a single year. Please remember that this figure is for one year alone. Many of the relocated alumni who become donors should continue to support their college or university, fraternity or sorority, professional organization or grad school subsequently, multiplying the benefits of relocating them MANY TIMES over several years. The ARCH Project will provide a way to accomplish this goal, with the participation and support of educational, fraternal and professional institutions across North America. When the full system comes on line, it will be funded entirely through modest annual user fees from participating institutions, for unlimited access. Meanwhile, as we develop the system, we invite qualified educational, fraternal and professional institutions to submit free search queries. Before following the link below, we respectfully ask each participating institution to limit its use to FIVE FREE SEARCHES PER WEEK. We also ask that you respond to inquiries from other participating institutions, if info on one of your alumni is needed for a search in the future. We hope you find The ARCH Project beneficial, and encourage you to use it whenever you need to search for lost alumni.
Click HERE to search for lost alumni of your institution.
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