An alumni association's website has three jobs: let members find each other, tell them about events and take registrations, and take donations. It is usually run by volunteers with no budget for maintenance, which makes the fourth job the hardest: staying up to date when nobody is paid to update it. An alumni website template that is a handsome layout without a directory, an events system and a giving page is a brochure the association will stop updating. This page sets out what the template needs, the privacy decisions a directory forces, and how to cost it so a volunteer committee can choose between a template, a membership platform and an agency.
The directory, and the privacy decisions it forces
A member directory is the reason alumni visit: find a classmate, a mentor, someone in a city or an industry. It needs registration, a profile each member controls, search by year, name, place and field, and privacy settings so a member decides what is visible and to whom. Those settings are not optional: a directory that publishes members' details without their choice is a data protection problem and a reason members leave. Decide before launch what is visible by default, who can see it, and how a member opts out entirely.
Events, news and the giving page
Events with a page each, a registration form, a payment where there is a ticket, and reminders. News that a volunteer can post in five minutes from a phone, or it will not be posted. A giving page that takes a donation online, issues a receipt, and states the association's charitable status plainly, because a donor wants to know whether the gift is deductible and the tax rules on charitable organisations decide that. Those three are feature lines, and a membership or nonprofit platform usually provides all of them at a monthly fee below the cost of assembling them from plugins.
Costing the template route against a platform
On the website cost calculator, the alumni site's pages are few and cheap: home, about, events, news, giving, contact and the legal pages. The features are the directory with privacy controls, event registration with payment, and online giving with receipts. Assembled from plugins on a general template, the feature line is real and the volunteer who maintains the plugins is the risk. On a membership platform, the feature line is small and the monthly line carries it. For a volunteer-run association, the platform's monthly fee is usually the cheaper route over a year once maintenance is counted.
Questions people ask about alumni website template
Should the directory be public?
No. Members' details should be visible to logged-in members only, with each member choosing what is shown. A public directory is a harvest for spam and a breach of the trust that makes members register.
Can we take donations through the site?
Yes, with a giving page connected to a payments provider that issues receipts. State the association's charitable status so donors know whether the gift is deductible.
Who will maintain the site?
Decide that before choosing the platform. A site that needs a developer to post news will not have news; choose something a committee member can update from a phone.