The old register
Matched against your records
Import the register the school kept. Each applicant is matched by name and roll number, then a person approves them.
For schools
Once a pupil, always welcome.
Most schools have a spreadsheet of leavers, a cupboard of old photographs and one member of staff doing alumni relations between other jobs. AlumDeck turns that into a proper alumni website on the school's own hosting: reunions, the school's history, a photo archive and a members-only directory. $49 a year.
Things you can check for yourself
The problems
What goes wrong in a school alumni programme.
| What happens in most schools | What AlumDeck changes |
|---|---|
| Alumni relations is one person's side job, and it stops when they leave. | The site, the logins and the backups sit on the school's hosting, so they go into the handover file with everything else. |
| Leavers drift away the week they walk out of the gates. | A public site they can find years later, a join form that asks the year they left, and a private room for each year group. |
| The best photographs are in a cupboard or on old pupils' phones. | Members upload up to 10 historic photos at a time, with a caption and an era. Staff publish them into albums. |
| Some leavers are still under 18. | Every account waits for approval, the directory listing is opt-in, and email and phone start hidden. |
| A recurring cost has to be defended every year. | One published price, $49 a year. If it lapses, the public pages stay up. |
Remember · the school's story
The history the prospectus never had room for.
A timeline, In Memoriam, a hall of fame and a photo archive are built in. The entries below are from the demo's invented college.
- 1966
The doors open
A converted grain mill, 140 students and eleven teachers.
- 1974
Riverside Hall
Finished after a four-year appeal to local families.
- 1983
The boathouse
Paid for by alumni. The first regatta was lost by a length.
- 2016
Fifty years on
Four of the original eleven teachers answer the register.
Year groups
A room for every year
Each class year that has a member gets a private room of its own. Nobody has to set it up.
Old photographs
Sent in by old pupils
Uploads wait for a moderator, then join an album tagged by decade.
What it does
What a school actually opens.
Reunions
Reunions by year group, with a real head count
One event page per reunion, with the date, the venue and the programme. Old pupils who have joined answer Yes, Maybe or No, and the page shows the seats left.
- Free QR tickets checked in on any phone at the door
- A CSV of who is coming, for the caterer
- A private room for each year group, created automatically
Photo archive
The cupboard of photographs, online at last
Albums by era, from the founding years to last summer's sports day. Old pupils send their own photographs from the members' area, and nothing appears until a member of staff publishes it.
- Up to 10 photos per upload, 8 MB each
- A caption and an era on every submission
- Publish into an album, or reject
Waiting for a moderator
Class photographs, 1969 to 1999
Registration
Only old pupils get in
The join form asks for the year they left, a roll number if they know it, and a memory that proves they were there. Load the old register and each application is matched against it.
- Register import of up to 20,000 rows
- Up to eight likely matches beside each application
- Classmates within three years can vouch
Application
Tom Sato, 2009
Match: Tom Sato2009, roll 118
Match: T. Sato2008, roll 121
Match: Tomas Sato2010
EmailConfirmed
Vouches1
MemorySports day, 2008
The annual fund
The annual fund, without a platform fee
An appeal page with a goal and a running total. Gifts reach the school's own bank account as they do today; staff record each one and AlumDeck emails a numbered receipt.
- No percentage of what you raise
- Donors named only if they agree
- A CSV for the bursar
Your first month
Four weeks, two hours at a time.
A plan for one member of staff and whoever looks after the school website.
Week 1: put it beside the school website
If the school site is on cPanel hosting, AlumDeck can usually share the account, on a subdomain such as alumni.yourschool.org. The installer checks the server on its second screen and names anything missing.
Week 2: write the history first
Ten timeline entries from the prospectus and the school magazine, three or four notable old pupils, and a short policy for In Memoriam notices. A year can be free text, so "1960s-70s" works.
Week 3: load the register and open the doors
Import the old admissions register so applications are matched automatically, then send the join link to leavers, their parents and the staff room.
Week 4: announce a reunion and ask for photographs
One event with a capacity, and a news post asking old pupils to send in what they have. By the end of the month the archive has its first albums and people have a reason to come back.
The honest part
What it does not do for a school, yet.
- Changing the word "batch", which shows in the member area and emails. The leaving-level list and its label are already settings. Planned: release 1.1
- Event sign-up for guests who have not joined. Only members can RSVP. Planned: release 1.3
- Taking money online for the annual fund. Gifts are recorded after they arrive. Planned: release 1.2
- Resizing photos on upload. They are stored as sent, so ask for sensible sizes.
- Other languages. The interface is English only. Planned: release 2.0
Everything else AlumDeck does not do is on the full list, and the planned releases are on the public roadmap.
Questions
What schools ask
Do we have to buy new hosting?
Usually not. If the school website already runs on cPanel hosting with PHP 8.3 or newer and MySQL, AlumDeck can sit on the same account under a subdomain. The second screen of the installer checks the server and names anything missing, so you can forward that list to your host.
Is $49 a year really the whole cost?
For the software, yes: every feature, unlimited old pupils and unlimited staff accounts. You also need hosting, a domain or subdomain, and a couple of hours a week of somebody's time. Every licence has a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Where is our alumni data stored?
In a MySQL database on your own hosting, in whichever country your host operates. No alumni data is sent to us. Member avatars are drawn from initials on your own server, so nothing about them leaves it.
Some of our leavers are under 18. Does that change anything?
It is a good reason to keep registration gated, and it is gated by default: every account waits for a member of staff to approve it, the directory listing is opt-in, and email and phone start hidden. What age you accept, and what you publish, is the school's policy to write down before launch.
We have two thousand old pupils in a spreadsheet. What happens to it?
The CSV import wizard maps your columns, runs a dry run and then imports. Imported members start outside the directory and are not emailed, so plan an announcement. You can also load the old admissions register separately, so new applications are matched against it automatically.
What happens if the member of staff running it leaves?
That is how most school alumni sites die. Because AlumDeck sits on the school's own hosting, the logins go into the same handover file as everything else the school runs, and the new person gets their own account rather than a shared password.
Also for
Not a school? Read the page that fits.
Alumni associations
Volunteer committees that change at every AGM. A site the next committee inherits, with a login for every post.
For associationsColleges and universities
An alumni office of two or three people and forty batches. No per-record or per-seat fee.
For collegesDevelopers and agencies
Installing it for a client on shared hosting. Requirements, the installer and one licence per site.
For developers
Walk round a school-shaped demo.
The demo college has sixty years of timeline, reunions by year group and an archive by decade. Sign in as an admin or as a member. It puts itself back every night.
Sign-in details on the demo pageResets every night