You Can Now Add Co-Owners to Your Alumni Business Listing

Plenty of the best alumni businesses were not built alone. A pair of college roommates who started a design studio. Two classmates who opened a restaurant a decade after graduation. A founder and the co-founder who runs engineering. Until now, a Hire Alum listing could only credit one of them.

That changes today. You can now add co-owners to any business listing you own — so everyone who built the business shows up in your school's alumni directory, not just whoever filled out the form first.

What's new

Every listing you own now has an Alumni section in its editor. From there you can invite a fellow graduate to co-own the listing in a few seconds. Once added, your co-owner:

• Appears on the public listing alongside you, with their name, class year, and a short bio
• Can verify their alumni status to earn the verified badge next to their name
• Can help manage the listing — edit photos, description, hours, and contact details
• Gets a friendly email invite explaining how to sign in and claim their spot

It is the same directory your school's community already trusts — now it tells the full story of who is behind each business.

How to add a co-owner

The flow is built to take less than a minute:

1. Go to your account and open the listing you want to edit.
2. Open the Alumni section in the listing editor.
3. Click Add a co-owner.
4. Enter their email address and name. Optionally add their class year and a short bio.
5. Click Send invite.

That's it. Your co-owner appears on the listing immediately as pending verification, and an invite email goes out to the address you entered. When they sign in with that email, their account links to the listing automatically — no codes to copy, no forms to forward.

Do co-owners need to accept an invitation first?

No. This is the part most people ask about, so here is the short version: your co-owner shows up on the listing the moment you add them. You do not have to wait for them to accept anything.

The email address matters because it is what connects the person to the listing. When they later sign in with that same address, three things happen automatically:

• Their account links to the business
• They can verify their alumni status for the verified badge
• They gain editing access to the listing

So the invite is less of a gatekeeper and more of a head start. The credit is instant; the verification and editing follow whenever they sign in.

Action	Happens when you add them	Happens when they sign in
Shown on the public listing	✅ Immediately	—
Listed with name, class year, bio	✅ Immediately	—
Verified alumni badge	—	✅ After they confirm their details
Can edit the listing	—	✅ Full editing access

Who can edit the listing

Every owner on a listing — the original owner and any co-owners who have signed in — can manage it. That means a co-owner can update the hours when they change, swap in a better photo, or fix a typo in the description without going through you.

That shared access is the point: a listing that any owner can keep current is a listing that stays accurate. It also means you should only add co-owners you genuinely trust with the business, the same way you would add someone to a shared business account anywhere else.

The primary owner — whoever first created the listing — is always an editor and cannot be removed. You can remove any other co-owner at any time from the Alumni section.

Why this matters for your business

A listing that credits every founder is not just more accurate — it works harder for you.

It widens your reach inside the alumni network. Each co-owner brings their own class year and their own circle of fellow graduates. A 2010 grad and a 2015 grad on the same listing connect with two overlapping but distinct alumni communities. More mutual connections means more reasons for a fellow alum to choose you over a stranger.

It builds trust. Two verified alumni behind a business is a stronger signal than one. When a potential customer from your school sees that the people running the business are both graduates — and both verified — the shared connection that makes alumni hire alumni gets stronger.

It keeps the listing alive. Businesses are busy. When more than one owner can update the listing, it is far more likely to stay current — and a current listing with the right phone number, hours, and website is one that actually earns business.

A note on trust and verification

Co-owners appear as pending verification until they sign in and confirm their class year and school. This is deliberate. It lets you credit a business partner publicly right away, while keeping the verified badge meaningful — the badge only appears once the person has confirmed they are who the listing says they are.

If you would rather wait to credit someone until they have verified, you can simply add them once you know they are ready to sign in. Either way, the directory stays honest: a verified badge always means a real, confirmed graduate.

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Most alumni businesses are a team effort. Now your listing can say so. Open your listing, head to the Alumni section, and add the people who built it with you — it takes about a minute, and it makes your place in your school's directory tell the whole story.