Alumni: How to Nail Alfred

Those old school ties are not always as taut as alma mater would like, especially at solicitation time: about 5,000,000 alumni of U.S. colleges might just as well be in hiding as far as their schools know. In their pursuit of alms among alumni, college fund raisers are now finding missing grads by employing private gumshoes—the same kind that hunt down missing husbands, debtors, stockholders, heirs, and even swains who swindle widows. The detective work is sometimes hilariously effective. When found, one graduate of Pratt Institute came across handsomely, but pleaded: “Please don’t send me any mailings with ‘Pratt’ on them—my son thinks I went to an Ivy League college.”

The most efficient finder of lost alumni—60,000 since 1962—is Manhattan’s Tracers Company of America; alumni tracing is now the biggest part of its business. Tracers General Manager Edward Goldfader estimates that colleges could gain $20 million a year by dunning all of their lost grads. Tracers, which gets between $3 and $5 for each alumnus it finds, employs 18 people armed with U.S. telephone books, city directories, social registries, professional and business directories, even some voting lists. Thirteen field agents check local probate records.

Most of this is tedious routine, but Tracers does not shun sly tactics. For example, to confirm that it has found Alfred Alumnus, whose last address was 1500 Shady Lane, Tracers may place a person-to-person call to William Alumnus at the suspected new address. “There’s no William here; my husband is Alfred,” the wife replies. Tracers’ agent interrupts, tells the operator, “We’re looking for the one who used to live at 1931 Shady Lane.” “Oh no,” says the wife, “we used to live at 1500—it’s not us.” But Tracers, of course, has nailed Alfred.

That approach is rarely necessary, since few alumni really try to evade their schools. Former Rider College Student David Linowes said he was “not at all annoyed” at being found by Tracers—”I never knew I was missing.” He gave the college $20. Roy Bode, alumni relations director at Catholic University of America, says that Tracers found more than 4,000 C.U. alumni, whose contributions helped raise the university’s alumni fund from $70,000 to $150,000 last year. The University of Pennsylvania was pleased with Tracers’ work in finding 300 alumni, but has since hired its own full-time searcher at a $5,000 salary, and she has found about 7,000 alumni.