In March of 2026, Almabase interviewed the Alumni Engagement director at University of Illinois. One of her big points she made was that it is CRITICAL to remove barriers to register for evemts if you want to increase engagement. We need the abililty for an allum to enter their first and last name and year into the registration section of an event at the beginning and have almabase look for a match - the same way it works now on the back end when you go to map a registrant for an event. That is, have the registrant REVIEW their info vs. RE-KEY their info! This is so basic in terms of "we know you" and would go a long way to (1) reducing hte time it takes to register for an event AND (2) help us keep people engaged - make it easier to registe, and (3) cut down on "verification emails" because people enter a new email and (4) cut down on abandonment + drop ins. This should be optional when an admin is setting up an event. Some institutions obviously have large bases and they many not want this. But we have less than 5,000 alums and they are all in Almabase, so we really want this.

I mean this is a DIRECT suggestion from the interviewee more than 6 months ago and it's still not on the roadmap as far as I can tell.