The ONA relies on a small network of outside contractors and individuals, often alumni of St Andy's, to provide analysis.
Individuals, including alumni, were the largest source of gifts, accounting for nearly 47% of the total.
Unlike a traditional lender, CommonBond collects money from individual investors, including alumni of graduate programs who want to support other students, and channels it into loans.
Alumni contributions were basically flat at $6.83 billion, and donations from individuals who are not alumni fell 4.1percentto to $5.2 billion.
Alumni association engagement and contributions tend to be lower where less value is realized between individual alums.
Other big sources were foundations, $6.2 billion; individual donors who were not alumni, $5.2 billion; and corporations, $4.4 billion.
Ann E. Kaplan, director of the council's annual survey on Voluntary Support of Education, said that giving by individual donors who were not alumni rose 22percentt last year.
Ning.com currently hosts 6,500 K-12 and 2,100 Higher Ed social networks, and range from platforms for teachers, individual schools and classes to alumni groups.
Various 'secondary' data sources were tested to update contact details for the two test cohorts: the 'white pages' internet directories, the Swiss Nursing Association ASI/SBKK) membership files, individual nursing schools' societies of alumni (most of which do not exist anymore), and main employers such as hospitals, home care and school/community health services.
Startup incubator and network TechStars has raised $24 million in new funding from the Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Avalon Ventures, DFJ Mercury, SoftBank Capital, SVB Financial Group, RRE Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, TechStars Alumni, and several individuals.
