E-letter sent to the AlumniUnit Consortium on 10/13/10:

Dear Unit Member,
Because of the Homecoming season, we have received a tremendous amount of inquires as to what going on with your Unit and the HBCU Unit Networks as whole. NING (our social-network platform) changed hands of ownership this past summer, and brashly decided to raise the costs to operate our networks…significantly.

After several weeks of talks and reasoning, we were unsuccessful in convincing them to honor the operating costs for our 33 Unit networks under our previous developer. The new pricing structure raised operating costs by more than 400% (this is not a typo). This is based on how many HBCU Unit networks we manage and the amount of members in each.

As most of you know, it has been our goal to ensure that each Unit network is enjoyed at NO charge to its users and be looked upon as an exclusive environment to connect with the extended family and friends of their Alma maters.

Under the old pricing structure, the advertisement banners you would see throughout the networks usually covered the costs incurred to operate them. However, due to the overall economy and social media landscape, ad revenue has waned quite a bit. Because of this, we made the decision to suspend the operation of ‘separate’ networks, and forward all Units to HBCUUnit.com until further notice.

Since the suspension of individual Unit networks we have been confronted by Ning, promoters, alumni office directors, data companies and others interested in buying respective Unit networks….but, we will NOT sell out.

Unit networks have always been (and will remain) powered by Alumni, exclusively for Alumni. It is in this spirit we challenged ourselves to come up with solution to restore Unit networks, while benefiting the members within the network at the same time.

Today, we FINALLY unveil the following solution and policy:

• We have set up a UNIT Donation page on AlumniUnit.com with ALL the Unit Networks listed.
• ANY donation amount can be submitted towards the Unit.
• Each month, donors of $20 or more will be credited on the Unit’s site under the “DONORS” tab. Your Name (or Business) will be recognized there with a an optional hyperlink to the website/url of your choice.
• 5 or more donors of $20 in a monthly period will be included in an email-blast sent directly to all members of your Unit in lieu of their support. *Team up with other business owners*

So there you have it…We hope that you find this solution to be beneficial and effective. (Unit site administrators across the country are absolutely ecstatic about it)
As usual, we welcome the feedback of all members and want to be of service to you in any way possible.

Thank you, and God bless.

The AlumniUnit.com Team
U-nifying N-etworking I-nforming T-ranscending

ps. You may continue to enjoy the AlumniUnit.com blog, and the HBCUUnit.com social network in the meantime.