PA Sites

About Project Alumni

Hi, my name is Steve Plant and I am the founder of Project Alumni. A few years ago I was using one of the large alumni sites and I found a classmate that I wanted to try to reconnect with but when I saw how much it cost, I decided that we were never really that great of friends anyway. In all seriousness, I realized that the alumni sites out there excluded classmates from reconnecting due to their outrageous prices. That is when I decided to create a place where all classmates could reconnect in a safe, secure and inexpensive place. The idea of Project Alumni was born.

I already owned a small web design and technology consulting business so I started building Project Alumni as a side project. Originally my goal was to offer the service for free. But in order for the sites to grow and be valuable to the alumni, money had to be spent for advertising through Google and other various search engines. I figured a one-time nominal contribution of $5.00 to use some portions of the site would not exclude members from reconnecting with their old pals and would cover the costs of advertising and hosting. Of course all the reunion planning tools and announcements had to stay free for everybody.

By 2006 I had 150 alumni sites up and running and life was good. Little did I know that life would get better. This is when, through an online social networking site, I met the love of my life, Andrea. We were married a year and a half later. It was because of her constant encouragement and belief in Project Alumni that we decided to take it to the next level. She closed her business that she had owned and decided that it was time for us to really get this site off the ground.

Now, working side by side every day from our home we are constantly improving the sites, adding more schools, and finding ways to make it better for our members. We do all of this on the basis of honesty and integrity. All of those other alumni sites are commercial business that are about making money. We want Project Alumni to be different. We want it to be down to earth and easy to use. That is why we do not fill up the page with a trillion features that just confuse people. We keep it simple so alumni of all ages can utilize the site. We keep it honest by telling our site visitors about the nominal fee in big letters right on the home page, before they provide any personal information. And, if after joining, someone decides that the site isn't right for them, we make it 100% refundable.

We now have over 60,000 alumni using Project Alumni sites to plan reunions and reconnect in a safe way. If it were not for online social networking sites, like Project Alumni, I know I never would have met my wife. That is what keeps us going everyday - knowing that there is a chance that we can help someone else connect, like we did, and live happily ever after.