This year, DU Student Life is branding October as “ORGtober” in order to encourage students to use OrgSync as a resource for information about student organizations and events on campus. ORGtober will include a sweepstakes for student organizations and training sessions throughout the month on how to use OrgSync.

“One of our big goals this year is to support student orgs,” said On-Campus Senator and Student Organizations Chairperson Jeffrey Mariano. “We’ve used OrgSync for a few years, but it hasn’t been fully explained. This year what we’re trying to do is make OrgSync the hub for all the information student orgs need.”

Student Life recently created the Pioneer Organizations Support Team (POST), a pilot program to help student organizations with everything from marketing to planning events.
“It’s been working so far. Some student orgs have reached out to us,” said Mariano.
POST is also partnering with Undergraduate Program Support (UPS) to teach students how to use 25 Live, a way to reserve campus spaces for events.

Other resources for student organizations on OrgSync include surveys, advertising, email listservs and syncing to Facebook. Students can also browse organizations and upcoming events on the home page.
“What they did this year was register all first years in OrgSync. We’re trying to get them used to using it,” said Mariano.

All student organizations must have an account registered on OrgSync to be registered as an organization at DU. They must also relicense with USG through OrgSync once a year in order to receive funding. The majority of student organizations relicense in the spring.

Over the summer, POST went through each organization to see if they had relicensed in the last year. If they had not, their page was disabled. There are now 101 organizations listed on campus, including four new organizations that were licensed at the last Undergraduate Student Government (USG) meeting.

“We’re trying to update it as much as possible,” said Mariano. “Some information might be outdated, like when they have meetings. But constitutions and financial reports, what they need to be student orgs, those are updated.”

According to Mariano, organizations who update their page with a renewed constitution, post on their news feed, add their members and register two events by Oct. 18 will be included in a sweepstakes to win one of two $85 prizes to fund their organization.

“October is the month where everyone is already settled in and they want to start thinking about planning events for the rest of the school year,” said Mariano. “We want to give them the tools to do that.”