BuddyPress.org

Old thread but good google result… this mod seems to work best for me

1) add selected to your theme/child theme and also put Alphabetical at the top.
2) add this function into your theme’s functions.php
`
function sort_alpha_by_default( $qs ) {
return ($qs) ? $qs : ‘type=alphabetical&action=alphabetical’;
}
add_filter( ‘bp_dtheme_ajax_querystring’, ‘sort_alpha_by_default’ );
`