Stanford Business

NOVEMBER 2006


New ACT Database Aids Volunteers, Alums

Since the Alumni Consulting Team (ACT) was founded in 1987, nearly 1,000 Stanford Business School alumni have served as volunteer consultants to more than 350 nonprofit and public-sector organizations. The collective experience of ACT consultants amounts to almost as many approaches to solving a problem as the issues its volunteers have addressed. Yet similar projects are carried out by different teams of alumni consultants, often with little knowledge of what another team has done. For years, ACT consultants have asked each other, “Why must we keep reinventing the wheel?”

This year the answer is: “You don’t have to!” act has created a new “Ask ACT” knowledge base to release the group’s collective expertise. Ask ACT documents, housed on ACT’s public website, are written by experts in their fields. In addition, a password-protected database enables Business School alums to locate volunteers, projects, and clients from the past.

ACT also will host an interactive weblog, designed in conjunction with the Stanford Social Innovation Review, where readers can submit their burning questions to ACT experts. All questions and answers will become a permanent part of Ask ACT, searchable by future alumni consultants and nonprofits. Learn more about Ask ACT at stanfordact.org.