The School of the Brown County Ursulines (BCU) was a small historical school located in SW Ohio. Although the doors of the school closed years ago, the sisters, faculty and former students desire to keep our heritage and rich tradition alive.

Our original alumni management system was a little antiquated. We maintained a simple billboard-type web presence with a discussion forum. Membership management was accomplished by means of a manual system of spreadsheets and lists. The extent of our direct communication was a twice-yearly newsletter with all the associated printing and postage costs.

Thinking we could update our communications, the Alumnae Association board explored the possibly of adding features to the site to make it more interactive, to streamline Association management tasks and ultimately save money.

As with most alumni associations, ours exists with a 100% volunteer effort. It was important for the changes to be easy to administer and worth the effort and expense. The search began for a membership package to meet the requirements. We compared several products on the market with two goals in mind: a complete solution with no monthly fees and the ability to create and implement membership profiles with ease. Our search turned up a number of options. Some featured a payment and file repository model, which was more appropriate for selling memberships rather than creating an online community. These choices and options fell far short of our minimum requirements. It was also of utmost importance that all interactions on the site occur in a very secure manner. The desire to protect the profiles and maintain the privacy of the membership was paramount.

The first aspect of Profile Manager worthy of note was the free download of the Basic package. We were able to test Profile Manager without spending a dime. Profile Manager is aptly named since it really shines in the "profile" department. It was quite simple to create additional fields to capture membership information of particular interest to fellow classmates and friends.

Profile Manager has since become the central hub for our entire membership site. We created a preliminary profile screen that allows the members to create and maintain their own personal contact information for the association membership database. A second profile page provides a place for members to share what is going on in their lives, update us on children and grandchildren, jobs, travels, interests and more. The integration of Profile Manager with a phpBB was a very simple procedure. The addition of a discussion forum has added an element of fun to the membership communication. The web site front end was created on WordPress. The blog is for sharing information about the School of the Brown County Ursulines that we want in the public domain. It was a simple matter to customize the Profile Manager templates to match the blog layout. This was easily accomplished using the blog css style sheet as a springboard. The result is a cohesive site design and a pleasant, user-friendly experience. This public blog has an additional benefit. Any member can instantly become a contributing editor submitting articles and events of interest to the members and friends of BCU.

The support for the Profile Manager products is terrific. The numerous online tutorials answered most of our questions. These were bookmarked and referenced frequently for help. Interlogy has also created an exceptional sense of community surrounding the Profile Manager product line. Tips and ideas are shared frequently on the discussion forums.

As we grow and develop this aspect of our association, we have immediate plans to automate registration for our annual Alumnae Day and payment of association dues.

We are extremely pleased with our selection of Profile Manager Basic as the basis for our revamped alumni site. We are also looking forward to benefiting from the additional features in Profile Manager Premium.