Skip to main content

Alumni — post-enable runbook

Alumni is now on. The directory, career board, and mentor profiles surface automatically — but they only feel useful once you have at least a small alumni cohort with their privacy settings reviewed. The next half hour is setup plus a careful look at what is exposed to whom.

For the surface-level overview, see the Alumni module reference.

Prerequisites​

Before Alumni is useful, confirm:

  • Storage is configured and verified for the org. Alumni profile photos and career posting images live in your storage bucket.
  • At least one member has a status in alumni, active_alumni, or lifetime_alumni. Members in undergraduate statuses do not show up in the alumni directory.
  • You have decided your default privacy posture (more open vs. alumni-only by default). The platform default is alumni-only for contact fields.

Who can enable it​

Only a platform admin can toggle Alumni for your org. Org admins request the change through their platform admin.

What gets auto-created​

Enabling Alumni does not create directory entries, mentor profiles, or career postings. AlumniPrivacySettings rows are created on demand the first time an alumni views their privacy page — they are not bulk-materialized at enable time.

The daily Celery task expire_career_postings runs against every org with Alumni enabled and deactivates postings past their expires_at timestamp.

What appears in the sidebar​

The Members group picks up two new entries for org admins: Alumni Directory and Career Board. Chapter members and officers see the same two items plus Mentors under their Members group. Regional admins do not get Alumni surfaces by default.

First 30 minutes — required steps​

  1. Open Org → Members → Alumni Directory. Confirm the directory loads. If it is empty and you expect alumni, check that those members are in an alumni status — undergraduates do not appear here.
  2. Click into one alumni record. Confirm the privacy-controlled fields render the way you expect for your role (org admins see everything; the public directory hides hidden fields).
  3. Open Org → Members → Career Board. Create one starter posting — typically an existing internship at an alumni's company — so the board does not greet members with an empty state.
  4. Decide whether you want an alumni-only forum. If yes, go to Community → Engage, create a new forum, and set the alumni forum flag on it. (This requires Community to be enabled too.)
  5. Send a single bulletin to alumni explaining what was just turned on, what their privacy options are, and how to opt into the mentor program.

First 30 minutes — recommended next steps​

  • Walk through the alumni privacy panel yourself as a logged-in alumni member so you understand what your alumni will see when they open it for the first time.
  • Recruit 5–10 alumni to opt into the mentor program before promoting it broadly. An empty mentor list is worse than no mentor program.
  • Tag your most engaged alumni in the directory so you can surface them quickly for recruitment, career fairs, and reunion outreach.
  • If you have not already, run a status-update pass on graduating seniors so they roll into an alumni status cleanly.

What happens if you disable​

Turning Alumni off hides the alumni directory, career board, and mentor surfaces from sidebars and returns 403 on the related endpoints. Data is preserved — privacy settings, mentor profiles, and career postings all stay in the database. Re-enabling restores access.

The expire_career_postings task stops running for the org once Alumni is disabled, so postings will not auto-expire during the off-period.

Common gotchas​

  • Mentorship matching depends on Community, not Alumni. The mentor profile lives in Alumni, but the matching endpoints are gated under Community. If a member opens Mentorship and sees nothing, you likely need both modules.
  • Privacy defaults to alumni-only for contact fields. Officers and undergrads will not see alumni emails until each alumnus opts in. This is intentional but surprises new admins.
  • There is no "own-chapter alumni only" visibility level. The four levels are everyone, alumni only, officers only, and hidden — nothing chapter-scoped.
  • Career postings need an expiry to auto-deactivate. Postings without an expires_at stay active until deactivated manually.
  • Mentor availability is honored on display, not enforced server-side. A mentor set to "closed" still has a record in the database; the UI just stops surfacing them.

Where to go deeper​

Last verified against v0.62.1 (2026-05-10).