.alumni

“Alumni” is the standard term for former students, graduates, or members of a school, organization, or program. Kingfish LLC ("Kingfish" or the "Registry"), applicant for the “.alumni” gTLD, will serve the global community of alumni by providing a dedicated namespace for lifelong connection between alumni and their alma maters. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), global higher-education enrollment alone surpassed 235 million students by 2020, more than doubling since 2000; cumulative populations of alumni now number in the hundreds of millions worldwide. Alumni are among the most consequential stakeholders any institution has. In the United States alone, the contributions of alumni consistently account for roughly a quarter of all philanthropic giving to higher education — funding scholarships, research, and financial aid that would otherwise depend on tuition or public support. Beyond monetary contributions, alumni provide mentorship, internships, recruiting pipelines, and reputational goodwill that shape an institution's standing over decades. Yet advancement professionals consistently report that a large share of graduates lose contact with their institutions within a decade of graduation — becoming "lost alumni" whose reconnection would benefit both the institution and, in many cases, the alumni themselves. The .alumni Registry is built to close that gap. It gives alumni a durable, portable digital identity tied to their affiliations — addresses that persist across jobs, employers, and personal email providers. It gives schools, organizations, and programs a dedicated namespace in which to publish alumni directories, class pages, chapter sites, and reunion tools. INTENDED REGISTRANTS AND USERS Though .alumni will be an open, generic top-level domain, intended registrants include, among others: (i) alumni of accredited educational and professional institutions; (ii) alumni associations, federations, and honor societies; (iii) colleges, universities, secondary schools, and vocational or professional programs administering alumni relations; (iv) class-year cohorts, regional chapters, reunion committees, and affinity groups; and (v) service providers whose work materially serves the alumni community, including career networks, giving platforms, and reunion coordinators. Users will include these registrants and the customers, partners, and end users who interact with them. ACTIVITIES TO ACHIEVE THE PURPOSE The Registry will operate as an open top-level domain with: a Sunrise phase for trademark holders; a Landrush phase; tiered pricing that keeps individual registrations affordable while discouraging misappropriation of strings associated with established institutions; anti-abuse monitoring aligned with the ICANN DNS Abuse Framework; and coordinated outreach to advancement offices and international higher-education networks. Names will be distributed through the ICANN-accredited registrar channel. SUSTAINABILITY OVER TIME Sustainability rests on three durable pillars. First, populations of alumni grow every year, with each graduating cohort adding to the addressable base; UNESCO's tertiary enrollment data confirms this is a global, secular trend. Second, both alumni and their institutions exhibit long tenure — alumni identities do not expire, and advancement offices operate on multi-decade planning horizons, both supporting strong renewal rates. Third, the Registry is capitalized to operate .alumni for the required contractual term even under conservative demand scenarios. Surplus revenue will be reinvested in abuse mitigation, Universal Acceptance, and community outreach — reinforcing the long-term value of the namespace to the alumni community it serves.