Amazon meets facebook et al

I love the idea of building a database of asks and opportunities. Leaving out of this conversation, the support on the back end for doing so (only one of the four schools that I have worked for could even have approached supporting this type of effort from a technology standpoint) I think the idea is exactly where we need to be aiming - how to make the online interaction with you similar to and maybe even surpassing that which your constituents have with with other non-profits and ultimately with the for profit businesses that they purchase from.

This then leaves me with an open and growing question - how to harness the tremendous amount of information that is shared through social networking sites. There are databases out there now that can scrape your emails against the dozen or so most popular social networks, identifying public profiles and supplying you with built in databases of who is on which. In the same fashion, a portion of each profile can be pulled in based upon common criteria. This is information that is relevant and important (indeed it is self reported) to your constituents. Sending out a solicitation talking about the environmental impact your campus has? Wouldn't it be great to be able to target alumni beyond those who were environmentally conscious as students? You have the data, pull it together and target those folks with that focus.

This is all the back end of the social network profiles that we see. Certainly we can use the front end as well - find some champions who are willing to engage others and create a sense of community. Use those champions to learn what is important about your institution to folks on the social network and then outside of the network ask them to "put their money where their keyboard is".