Members of registered student organizations will hear about the features and feedback of OrgSync, an online community management system, today during the Student Organization Cabinet meeting. 

The Student Organization Cabinet is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. in the Arcola-Tuscola Room in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union. 

OrgSync was founded in 2007 in Austin, Texas, and more than 200 organizations and universities use the web-based platform throughout the nation. 

Kaci Abolt, a junior communications studies major and the student vice president for student affairs, said the purpose of OrgSync is to integrate all organizations, offices and individuals together to post and share resources within the campus community.

“OrgSync has the capacity to put all communication of organizations in one place where students can find an easy way to balance all of their involvement,” Abolt said.

Informational materials about OrgSync will be distributed to organization members at the meeting and they will decide a date in April to host a webinar session with an OrgSync representative, she said. 

“The information is new to all of us so if we all learn it together then I think we can make a sound, knowledgeable decision,” Abolt said. “This could be a viable tool for all organizations to have a paper trail of all of their resources available for both current and prospective students to use.” 

Abolt said the first-year fee to purchase the system for Eastern would be about $15,000, and they are gathering student feedback to see if enough organizations would be interested. If the majority of students were in favor of the system, then they would contact departments, offices and administrators about their interest and see how the cost could be managed. 

Student Body President Ed Hotwagner, a senior math major, said he learned of the system about six months ago and contacted different universities that implemented OrgSync to see if it would be a good fit for Eastern.

He said some of the institutions he contacted include: Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, University of Wisconsin at Stout, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Boise State University, Arizona State University and Georgia College & State University at Milledgeville. 

The feedback will be compiled and presented at the meeting, he said. 

Some of the questions he asked the universities include how long the implementation process took, how willing different departments were to participate, how easy the system is for students, faculty and staff, and what some of the most useful aspects are. 

Hotwagner said some of the preferred features were: a calendar that combined all events and notifications of organizations, the ability to send mass text messages to members, an attendance tracker that also records how long someone was a member of an organization, the capacity to post different documents and finance information, as well as website building feature.

The implementation process varied from two months to a year, and department willingness depended on if an online community management system was already in place or not, he said. 

“From the feedback, I found that students had an easier time transitioning to the system than faculty and staff, which might be because students are more apt to adapt to technology, and those I contacted had different opinions on what the most useful aspect was,” Hotwagner said.  

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].