ALFA Exchange is an online social networking community for senior living professionals that brings together great ideas, best practices and lessons learned from other professionals in the senior living industry.
ALFA Exchange provides an outlet for you to connect with people like you! We call this web of ties, Networks! Networks are groups that are automatically built based on the Interests, Job History, Education and demographics you specify in your profile. You can find people who share your background and interests or discover common background and interest among your existing contacts!
Who uses ALFA Exchange?
- Senior Living professionals from big, medium and small companies
- Senior Living professionals at corporate headquarters, regional offices, individual senior living communities
- Senior Living professionals in Home Care, Independent Living, Assisted Living, Skilled Nursing
- Senior Living professionals in finance, operations, clinical services, human resources, sales and marketing, IT, etc.
- Staff of the Assisted Living Federation of America
- Academics and consultants who specialize in senior living.
Why Did ALFA Develop a New Site?
The new website is the latest development in a 2-year plan to improve the communication between senior living executives and employees, and make it easier for members and non-members to share their experiences in the senior living industry.
Last year, we launched a new, revamped website,
ALFA.org. This was a big change that had to be made to support the operations of our organization, and make it easier to provide the information needed for consumers, our members and national affiliates. Though we love the new site,
ALFA.org, did not directly address many aspects of how our members could communicate and share their voices and opinions with us, and among each other. The focus of ALFA Exchange has been on making a website for YOU to contribute your knowledge and resources.
ALFA Exchange Goal / Mission
ALFA's goal is to provide engaging and meaningful ways for our members and non-members in the senior living community to interact with one another and with
ALFA. We want you to share your experiences in the senior living industry by
submitting documents, ideas and stories. We want you to get ideas from
others. Our mission is to create a vibrant community where we are truly
thinking together.
What Features Does ALFA Exchange Offer?
eGroups: Combining the best of listserves and threaded discussion forums,
eGroups is an ideal communication tool to enable communities to engage
in dialog while pushing out and archiving user-generated content. Users
receive an easy-to-read email that contains a picture of the author
linked to the author’s profile, a link to the online archive where all
postings are automatically stored, and a mistake-free link to respond
to either the author or to the entire group.
Resource library: The Resource Library provides an area within ALFA Exchange where users
may upload/download files and comment, rate, and tag documents to offer
additional context to the posting to make it easy to search. Each
library can hold multiple kinds of documents, including PowerPoint presentations, PDFs,
images, Microsoft Office and Apple iWork documents. Each posting shows
the author’s image which links to his/her profile, allows for comments,
and automatically lists related documents based on tags.
Microsites: Microsites offer enough flexibility to
create a site that fits your actual content needs, but simple enough
that any member can easily use it without extensive training or
technical knowledge. Microsites allow users to choose a look and feel from available templates, modify navigation and create
dynamic content layouts using user controls within the .net master
page. Organizations protect their brand through offering component
sites without having to take on heavy maintenance and oversight
responsibilities, while at the same time, empowering volunteer leaders
to fully self-manage their own group communications. With the ability
to create as many websites as you need, Microsites gives organizations
the flexibility to quickly put up and tear down new websites for
special events, initiatives, and programs.
Member Directory: Comprehensive
user profiles that better represents each user which, in turn, helps to
foster stronger community bonds by offering more insight into and
familiarity with each user. ALFA Exchange's member directory allows users to view a
comprehensive profile of other group members to build networks as fast
as possible and easily communicate with one another.
Event Calendar: A graphical calendar to display events inputted by community members.
Wiki Glossary: Users can collaborate together to create and maintain definitions that serve as part of the knowledge base of the senior living
industry. With easy-to-use content creation interfaces, users can
post and modify new definitions, as well as rating, commenting and
viewing related terms.
Help Us BETA Test ALFA Exchange
We have been working on a complete new take on the ALFA website- a place solely for senior living staff to share their voices. We’re happy to announce the that new site is available for beta testing, and we’d like to invite the senior living community to try it out and give us your feedback.
About the ALFA Exchange BETA Site
While you’re testing the beta, you should know that all the data in it is live – the status of items is in real time and anything you do is real! You are seeing live community discussions, blog posts, and reviews.
Community.ALFA.org is still in development, so some aspects are incomplete (e.g. there may be no content in some communities, some visual design elements may need to be finalized, communities may have low engagement at the start).
To Get Started:
To get started,
click here to follow easy instructions for completing your profile and connecting with other senior living executives, partners and peers.
We Appreciate Your Feedback!
ALFA will be closely paying attention to your comments about suggested enhancements.
Let us know what would take ALFA Exchange from a user experience to an extraordinary user experience?! We rely on your input to help us prioritize improvements and features, so please share your thoughts.
Staying Connected
Please don't hesitate to reach out to ALFA to let us know if you are facing challenges using ALFA Exchange. Please feel free to contact
Jaclyn Allmon to learn more about how to navigate ALFA Exchange.