Unlike seniors who go through corporate recruiting, Miranda Johnson '97 had no alumni network to help her find a nonprofit career before the end of her senior year.
"Most of the alumni I had met were people who came back to do corporate recruiting and were the more traditional type," Johnson said.
So, in 2002 at her five-year reunion, Johnson started the group Alums for Social Change to focus on connecting socially active Dartmouth alumni and attracting current undergraduates to nonprofit ventures.
Students need access to experienced alumni with similar values and career objectives, Johnson said.
As advisors, alumni mentors provide a "social change" perspective on issues such as graduate school or job searches.
According to Rachna Jaggi '99, a member of ASC and a medical student, social change is a "purposely broad term, and we have included things from people working in nonprofits to Peace-Corps volunteers to public-school teachers."
Jared Alessandroni '03, who lives in New York City and teaches at an inner-city school in the Bronx, runs the group's web site, alumsforsocialchange.org.
The web site helps alumni communicate, organize action and get together for social and service activities.
Billed by Alessandroni as a "Tucker Foundation for alumni," ASC boasts 290 members, a majority of whom graduated during the past 10 years.
According to Johnson, the members are younger and more racially diverse than other alumni groups, and there are fewer corporate employees.
Current undergraduates interested in nonprofit work can contact group members or peruse the web site's list of job offers. For example, students and alumni can find out that Amnesty International and the Guatemala Human Rights Commission are hiring.
Taylor Thompson '08 contacted members of the group to help with a campus anti-hunger project and found many of its members very useful.
"Several ASC alums have helped with projects I'm working on, both by giving advice and suggesting other people to talk with," Thompson said.
While there are chapters of the organization in Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Southern California, the group's New York chapter remains the most successful due to the city's population and liberal tendencies, Alessandroni said.
The ASC employs the chapter system to accommodate local political differences.
Not all chapters, however, have been successful. Leah Horowitz '02 attempted to start a Pacific Northwest chapter of the group, but the geographical dispersion of alumni in the area stymied her plans.
ASC is working on several projects, including an annual panel in which various alumni explain to students what it is like working in the nonprofit sector.
Johnson said the New York chapter is considering a program during which Dartmouth alumni can spend a few days each month teaching at disadvantaged schools.
The ASC is also planning a fellowship program for Dartmouth graduates to obtain nonprofit jobs.
Although the nascent group has worked on few social change projects so far, it has big plans beyond the networking level.
"If nothing else," Alessandroni said, "it's a medium of communication for like-minded Dartmouth alums."
The organization and its planned fellowship program are modeled after Princeton University's "Princeton Project 55," a nonprofit organization connecting alumni wishing to solve social ills.
"We have big dreams, but we have pretty much stayed at the networking level for now," Johnson said.
