OrgSync turns student organizations into social network

Websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter all have one thing in common: They are all popular social networking sites used by student bodies at colleges across the United States and around the world.  

Now, college campuses have something else in common with social networking. A new program for college campus organizations called OrgSync is being adopted at universities around the country. The site provides a central platform which connects students to many of the groups on campus.

“It’s like Facebook but focuses more on groups rather than individuals,” said J. Coulter Ward, assistant dean of students for student involvement. 

 The program was adopted March of this year at Ole Miss to provide a better resource for the groups on campus.  

“It has resources for student organizations that we couldn’t provide for them,” Ward said.

Some of the tools Ward named include a website builder for the webmasters of organizations and a treasury management system, which Ward describes as a basic version of the program Quickbooks. The site also has communication tools, a job search and resume function, a to-do list function and an event planning tool for organizations.  

In addition to offering student registration for groups, the site offers an easy route to register a new organization. Currently, 124 student organizations at Ole Miss have signed up for the program. Ward said he is hoping to get more involved in the next few months.

Some of the programs involved are the Greek sororities and fraternities and many of the academic societies on campus. The first group to join was the Ford Center, which uses the site for employee management and event planning.  

To join the program, all a student has to do is go to orgsync.com, register and choose the University of Mississippi as the college.  OrgSync is not a widely known phenomenon around campus, but Ward hopes that the program will not remain a secret to the majority of the student body.

“I’m hoping it will be pretty popular. We want to be able to get students involved in it as much as possible,” Ward said. “Why not use technology?”

Sparky Reardon, the dean of students, said, “I think (OrgSync) it’s going to be a great way for individual student organizations to manage membership and an even greater way for organizations to communicate with each other.”

OrgSync was founded in 2007 by Eric Fortenberry and Cayce Stone. In 2009, the program reached 150,000 users and more than 15,000 student organizations. The company is anticipating that over 150 campuses will join OrgSync by end of this year.  

If anyone would like any more information on OrgSync, contact Coulter Ward at jcward@olemiss.edu.