My name is Karen Thompson and I am the Director of Alumni Engagement at Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT). I wanted to write you with a request for assistance; specifically, that you might be able to provide pro bono assistance to my non-profit with regard to creating an app for our alumni program.
First, a little bit about MLT: we are the premier career development institution that equips high potential African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans with the key ingredients—skills, coaching and door-opening relationships—that unlock their potential. By cracking the code on career potential, MLT is developing the next generation of minority leaders for the corporate, non-profit and entrepreneurial sectors; people of color who will, in turn, have transformational impact on our communities. MLT delivers programming that puts people of color on the fast-track to success at every stage of their careers: from College through MBA and the Executive levels. MLT is currently a leading source of minority talent for top graduate business schools and for many of the nation’s premier corporations and not-for-profits, including Stand for Children, Teach for America, the Knight Foundation, Google, McKinsey & Co, PepsiCo and Target.
There has never really been an alumni engagement program at MLT. We are currently 2,000+ strong and growing by 500 new alumni every year. As I build out the program, I am in the throes of executing a very serious communications plan and roll-out. I have many items on that list, as you can imagine, but one idea that I would very much love to move forward on is the creation of an app for our alumni; something that is a mix between “Around Me”, “UrbanSpoon” and “LinkedIn.” An extensive survey has made it clear that our Alumni do not feel that they have relationships or contacts with each other and not enough opportunities to volunteer. Accordingly, I would like to create an app that: (1) allows MLT alumni to find the closest alumnus in a town; this way, they could contact each other when traveling for business; (2) allows MLT alumni tofind an alumnus who fits certain criteria (say s/he graduated from our MBA Prep program in 2007, is currently working at Teach For America and works in Detroit); (3) would allow MLT to shoot out volunteer blasts and capture the names of those individuals who wanted to participate; and (4) a “Donate Now” feature.
This sort of thing is not used very often within the NFP context. As I am sure you can imagine, we just don’t have a gigantic budget. Accordingly, I approach ITP in hopes that you might be able to link us up with the brain power that streams through your program. My hope is that this project connects seamlessly with something one (or many) of your students are doing, or that this might be the type of project that one of your students would like to do as an independent study project and that ITP might help me be able to execute as a pro bono project.
I definitely do not have a hard deadline, although I would love to have something by December 2012. Accordingly, I write you early.
Best Regards,
Karen Thompson
kthompson@ml4t.org
kthompson@ml4t.org