UNT launches Six Degrees campaign to reconnect with alumni, friends

DENTON (UNT), Texas ľ The Division of Advancement at the University of North Texas is launching a new program to connect with alumni, supporters and friends. Advancement has teamed up with the Dallas-based Pursuant Group to conduct the “Six Degrees of UNT” program, which operates on the six degrees of separation principle.

Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy is attributed with forming the six degrees principle in 1929. It states that every person on Earth is connected to every other person by no more than a progression of five acquaintances.

In the Six Degrees of UNT program, the university will contact constituents via e-mail invitation, and ask them to forward the invitation to former UNT classmates, faculty, staff and supporters. Subsequent e-mails ask each invitee to provide current contact information.

Successful execution means UNT will have more reliable and efficient means to contact the more than 190,000 people in its contributor relations database. This, in turn, can save the university time and money, from returned, undeliverable print mail and dead-end e-mail addresses.

The program will be executed over six weeks beginning Thursday, Sept. 4. Upon completion, the Pursuant Group will assemble the data and provide it to Advancement for upload into the database.

“Our challenge is to find efficient, productive ways to communicate with our constituents,” said Randy Simmans, director of Advancement communications and public relations at UNT. “We all hear that the world is getting smaller in this age of technology. It is also moving much more quickly. People are on the move, physically and electronically.”

According to reports from Massachusetts-based FreshAddress, which holds patents for e-mail change-of-address technology, 30 percent of the U.S. population creates a new e-mail address each year.

Simmans said that when UNT’s Advancement office has acquired e-mail addresses from the Six Degrees program, it will utilize programs like the North Texas Alumni Association’s online community to keep people involved with the university and with each other.

“It’s just as important to keep alumni and friends connected with one another as it is for us to keep in contact with them,” said Derrick Morgan, executive director of the alumni association. “We need to make it easy for them to engage and conduct business together.”

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