A Mobile App for Your Alma Mater: Cambridge-based Startup Seeks to Keep Alumni Connected

Staying in touch with the college or university you graduated from, as well as the students you graduated with, can be a challenge. In addition to geographic barriers, online barriers often prevent alumni from keeping tabs on their alma maters.

As I learned at this year’s FutureM event, college and university websites are notoriously difficult to navigate (as what you’re looking for never seems to be on the homepage). And due to limited budgets and a lack of centralized decision-making, doing improvements to such websites is often a slow process.

One Cambridge startup, EverTrue, is striving to make it easier for alumni to stay true to their alma maters and to stay in touch with their fellow alumni. Founded in 2010, EverTrue has developed a location-based directory platform for alumni mobile apps. The platform, which they uniquely brand for each institution, keeps alumni connected through a set of interactive modules.

These modules include an “Events” module for informing alumni about campus and local alumni club events; a “Give” module that allows alumni to easily make donations; a “Media” module for sharing images from school Flickr streams and video from school YouTube channels; and a “News” module for aggregating content from school newspapers, alumni magazines, Facebook pages, Twitter streams, faculty blogs and other sources.

Michael Dinardi, a grad student at UMass Lowell (who also earned his undergraduate degree there in 2009), told New England Post that he would be happy to see his school work with EverTrue on a mobile app in the future. “I like that UMass Lowell has an online community for alumni,” he said, “but it’s not optimized for mobile… it can be a pain trying to access services on my phone.” Dinardi went on to say that “having alumni Facebook and Twitter updates all in one place would definitely be convenient.”

While Dinardi lives within commuting range of his alma mater, other alumni face geographic barriers that hinder them from taking more active roles in their alumni communities. Farrell Oxley, a self-proclaimed “master software aficionado” who graduated from Montreal’s McGill University in 2009 is now living in the Washington, D.C. area. Oxley told New England Post that he hasn’t “been aware of any McGill-related events in the area,” but contends that an EverTrue app could help him stay in-the-loop should alumni events take place nearby.

Back in June, EverTrue received $750,000 of a planned $1 million financing round through the TechStars Boston program. Walt Doyle, CEO of Where, was one of the primary investors. Now, according to recent federal documents, EverTrue has boosted that financing round up to nearly $1.3 million. While 28 investors participated in this recent financing, only EverTrue’s CEO, Brent Grinna, is mentioned in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. Grinna was motivated to find EverTrue after working as an alumni volunteer for his alma mater, Brown University.

EverTrue is currently not speaking with the press, but a representative did inform New England Post that the company has “some big launches coming up relating to our services” and will be “announcing this formally later this fall.”

New England Post will be included on the release, so check back to get the latest on EverTrue and their mobile alumni platform.

Related posts:

1. Cambridge-Based Startup Offers a Way to Ease Financial Burden on International Students
2. From Teens to Truckers: iZup Mobile App Helps Drivers Avoid Distractions
3. Cambridge Company Creates New, Cloud-based Atmosphere For Online Navigation
4. Web Under Construction: A Northeastern University Professor is Giving the Internet a Mobile Makeover
5. Loco for Locu; Cambridge Startup to Launch Online Menu Service, Receives Funding From Some of the Biggest Names in Tech

Short URL: http://www.newenglandpost.com/?p=4472

Posted by erik devaney on Sep 26 2011. Filed under Featured - For home page featured article, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry