It saddens me to bid Austin adieu as we announce that OrgSync is moving to Dallas on April 30^th.  I am thankful and happy though to take a moment to reflect on how wonderful Austin has been and all the support this community has given to our company since our founding in 2007.

Exactly three years ago, my co-founding partners and I moved into a 5-bedroom house in Avery Ranch (northwest Austin) with the intention of bootstrapping the start-up of our company, OrgSync.  We did not have any money beyond what our credit cards would hold, and so we decided to move in together and live off the company.  Rent was only $1,650 and with all our bills and food, the five of us figured out how to live on roughly $2,500 per month.

We had heard of other entrepreneurs bootstrapping their companies out of their houses and apartments, so it seemed like a good idea.  I’m pleased to tell you, three years later, that it was the best decision we ever made!  In fact, I would go as far to say the past three years literally living OrgSync have been the best three years of my life.  We did run into challenges along the way, but at the end of the day, we strongly believe it was that intense level of devotion that enabled us to self-fund and grow our company as fast as we did.  Austin was absolutely the best city with the most supportive community to do something like that.  I recommend to anyone thinking about starting a company to consider doing it in Austin, out of a house.

Beyond bootstrapping, the Austin community has been extremely friendly providing my team and me continual support and encouragement.  Everything from the Austin Tech Happy Hours to South by Southwest (SXSW) to all the social media meet-ups; the opportunities to network and meet new people are endless!  The best part of Austin is the people that make up this city.  Almost everyone here is genuinely interested in what others are doing and always willing to help out.  It’s that type of support that is extremely crucial for startups as you grind out and overcome the seemingly never ending hurdles of starting a new business.

So why are we moving the company to Dallas?  There are a few primary reasons we have chosen Dallas for the next stage in OrgSync’s life:

• New Executive Management – for the past three years my father, Don Fortenberry, has served as our virtual CFO, and has agreed to come on board full-time if we moved the company to Dallas.  Furthermore, we have hired one of Don’s former business partners and close friends, Michael Schwartz, as our Chief Operating Officer.  In order to maintain OrgSync’s rapid growth, we recognize the importance of having the right, experienced people around the table to ensure we continue to build OrgSync in a healthy and sustainable manner.  And since the right people, who we know and trust, are permanently located in Dallas, then that’s where we must go.
• Access to Capital – in Dallas our CFO and COO were able to raise a substantial amount of capital within two days, and now we have some great corporate leaders serving on our advisory board.  Fund raising was not nearly as feasible in Austin.
• Strong Corporate Environment – we have secured a great office in Dallas that is affordable and meets our needs as a small and growing business.  We are also very excited about the corporate environment that Dallas has and believe it will be a great opportunity for us to network with several larger businesses as we continue to grow ourselves.
• Close Proximity to More Clients – we have numerous clients in the DFW area (UTD, UTA, TCU, UNT, UNT Health Sciences, TAMS) and want to be as close to them as possible.  This will provide us the opportunity to frequently visit with these clients, conduct focus groups, provide lots of training, and take new employees on-site to visit with clients and organizations using OrgSync.

With all that said, we are still very sad to leave the Austin community.  Austin will always be OrgSync’s birthplace, and we will never forget our roots.  Even though we are moving our corporate headquarters, we will continue to have a large presence in Austin and will continue to attract talent and supporters to assist us in achieving our corporate mission.

On behalf of my entire team, I want to thank each and every Austinite that we have met and exchanged stories, advice, and memories.  We will keep you close in our hearts and wish everyone in Austin the very best with your current and future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Eric Fortenberry, Founder & CEO

We have been extremely busy this summer with the launch of our new user interface, Help Desk and Campus Launch Program among many other things.  We are excited about the new school year and will have new blog posts up soon.  We have several guest bloggers lined up for your reading pleasure, so be on the look out for some great material coming soon.

We hope everyone had a great summer!

Student Organizations Find Co-Sponsorship Opportunities by Networking with Other Organizations Using OrgSync

This past semester, I, Jessica Reyes, attended a meeting at the McComb’s School of Business as a representative of Alpha Kappa Psi. The meeting was held to discuss the recent student org budget cut for the 2009-2010 school year due to the business schools exclusion from receiving any monetary sponsorship from the University Coop.

As students, we knew the University Coop’s budget cut would lead to the end of many of our organizations’ events due to inadequate funding.   At this meeting we broke up into several groups to brainstorm different ways we could work this problem out effectively.    We found that each organization created and funded its events without collaboration of other organizations.  We came to the conclusion that greater communication amongst all business organizations was needed and that it would be best if the organizations could co-sponsor events so that the funds could benefit more than one organization.  This not only would spread the student org funding evenly, it would also inspire greater event attendance among business organizations with the benefit of networking with others.

The next question to ask is how this communication could be implemented with such a large amount of students involved.  With the advent of OrgSync on campus, organization leaders could create a group to facilitate the planning of their events. Other organizations can view this information and respond if they are interested in co-sponsoring an event.  This new means of communication will reduce spending, and create more opportunities for great events to take place even with the absence of the external monetary sponsorships.

OrgSync would like to announce our Implementation Webinar Series in June. We will focus on two campuses, one large and one small, who have already established the implementation process on their campus. They will share their best practices, successes, challenges, and suggestions for making the transition to OrgSync.

Our large campus implementation model will be on Thursday, June 11 at 1:00 EST and will feature Deborah Felder of the Student Organization Resource Center at North Carolina State University. NCSU began working with OrgSync last summer and developed a marketing plan to increase awareness of OrgSync to their 500+ student organizations and 31,000 students. Deborah has been an instrumental partner in helping define best practices for implementation and providing helpful feedback and suggestions for our new developments. Sign up for the large campus webinar.

We will feature our small campus implementation webinar on Wednesday, June 24 at 1:00 EST. Our feature presenter will be Rebecca Delo, Assistant Dean of Students for Student Life and Leadership Development at Muskingum College. Muskingum also joined the OrgSync family last summer, and Rebecca was very proactive in establishing the student organization registration process through OrgSync, as well as successfully attaining a high level of student adoption on her campus across their 100 organizations and 1500 students. Sign up for the small campus webinar.

We hope that our new clients and anyone who could benefit from these free webinars will attend! Please contact us with any questions.

I just wanted to post  a quick THANK YOU to my friends Jason Mellen, Denny Bubrig, and Kelly Jo Larsen, at Bowling Green State University in Ohio for hosting me for on-site training a couple of weeks ago! It is always a pleasure to visit their campus (especially when it isn’t negative seven degrees outside!).  Not only was I able to speak to nearly 200 student leaders about how they can use OrgSync to manage their student organizations, I also met the entire staff from the Office of Campus Activities and, with the help of Denny, demonstrated how OrgSync can streamline office processes and eliminate paper forms.

In addition to all of that training, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to visit with Michael Dunk, a recent graduate of the M.A. in College Student Personnel  program at BGSU, who will be joining OrgSync this week!  I am pleased to welcome him to the OrgSync team and to Texas!

After the quick trip it was off to Las Vegas and Utah for yet more OrgSync training fun….tune in tomorrow for more on that!

Eric Fortenberry and I (Nicole Andreas) recently returned from a campus visit at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa!  We were warmly welcomed by Dr. Stacy Jones and her team in the Student Involvement and Leadership office.

The Division of Student Affairs at the University of Alabama is actively pursuing opportunities to maximize each UA student’s learning experience.  “After searching for a solution to manage students’ co-curricular involvement on the student side, campus side and staff side for about three years, we brought OrgSync to our campus as the “Source” to manage our student involvement.  After conducting focus groups composed of faculty and students, we quickly learned OrgSync was the only choice that fully met our management needs and excited students,” said Dr. Stacy Jones.

UA is creating an entire program and team dedicated to providing their students with the services and tools they need to manage their student organizations and involvement needs.  They are branding the program as the “Source”, as in: the source to go to for all student involvement and student organization management.

To kick off the launch of the Source powered by OrgSync, Stacy Jones and Kristen DuBose planned an exciting Launch Party on the Plaza with games, prizes, food and fun to intrigue students about the new Source program.  Everyone signed up on OrgSync through their “My Bama” accounts(a single-sign-on solution that UA chose to implement to simplify user registration through their current campus sign-on information), and the Launch Party was a brilliant success.

Our visit also included meetings with several campus departments including Bama faculty, advisors and administrators.  Each department was excited about bringing OrgSync to campus for different reasons.  Vice-President of Student Affairs, Dr. Mark Nelson, immediately saw value in getting every campus department at UA on board.  He even asked, “Does OrgSync print money too?  What can’t this [OrgSync] platform do!?”

In between scheduled meetings, Eric and I were shown around Alabama’s extraordinary campus by Daniel Ware, a student leader from UA’s Residence Hall Association.  It was fascinating to learn the history behind the Tuscaloosa campus, and it was great to meet so many friendly students during our tour.  While traveling through campus, Zeta Beta Theta and Phi Mu were campaigning on the Quad to gain signatures on a giant blow-up ball.  For each signature, a donation would be made to the Children’s Miracle Network.  Of course, Eric and I had to sign the ball.  We are all about giving back to those in need.

Daniel was a great tour guide!  He brought us to see the football stadium and to see the famous “Walk of Champions.”  The Walk of Champions honors Bama football coaches who have lead the school to victory, and it displays the SEC titles and awards the football team has been recognized for.

After our tour, we met in the Student Recreational Center on campus to get all of the club sports team signed up.  We had a great turnout and we met with many different teams who were excited to start using OrgSync in the Fall.  The women’s soccer team was especially excited to be able to manage different user groups and target their specific information to manage and engage their team more efficiently.  Primarily, the players were particularly excited to learn that they could juggle their hectic sports schedules AND their involvement with other campus activities from just one place.

Before we left, Eric and I were asked to share our story with two entrepreneurial classes in the business school.  We really enjoyed talking to the students, and we felt inspired as these future entrepreneurs sat in the same seat I was in not too long ago.  I think a lot of them were inspired too, just to know it really was the same seat, and many of them told us about their dreams of starting their own company some day.  Several students even came up to us after the class to learn how they could get involved, and help spread the word about OrgSync.

Overall, our visit was extremely successful, and I can’t wait to go back to the University of Alabama.  Roll Tide!

Integration Enables OrgSync to Release a Premier Treasury Solution for Higher Education

OrgSync is excited to announce that it has integrated PayPal into its co-curricular management platform.  With PayPal, student leaders and campus administrators can electronically issue invoices and collect payments online.  The integration brings convenience and security to collegiate treasury management while decreasing administrative burdens and saving campuses time and money!

“We are pleased that OrgSync has chosen PayPal to provide student organizations and campus administrations with a safer and more convenient way to send and receive money online,“ said Glenn P. Lim, General Manager of Alliances and Vertical Markets at PayPal.  “We look forward to working with OrgSync to make the security and convenience of PayPal available to college campuses everywhere.”

OrgSync continues to evolve, offering campuses a partnership to build the ultimate campus management solution together!  “PayPal’s payment service is a great match for the needs of OrgSync’s technology platform,” said Eric Fortenberry, CEO of OrgSync.  “OrgSync has developed an unparalleled company culture, forming unique relationships with each one of our campuses.  We share a vision with our clients to build a solution that will benefit the Higher Education community as a whole and accelerate student involvement and success.  OrgSync has found the same zeal and values in PayPal and is excited to provide additional treasury benefits to its clients.”

You can view the press release here.

Cindy Royal is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University in San Marcos.  Cindy and I met on Twitter, when I volunteered to be interviewed by one of her student bloggers during SXSW Interactive.  You can view the OrgSync SXSW interview here.  We were excited to see social media being taught in the classroom and were even more excited to help students get hands on experience using social media!

As another SXSW Interactive comes to a close, I am pleased to be asked by OrgSync to provide some of my observations from this year’s event. I have attended the festival for many years, and this was the second year that I invited a team of student bloggers to cover the event. Our coverage, including photos, videos and archives of live stream interviews can be found at www.sxtxstate.com. SXSWi is such a fantastic opportunity for students to engage with concepts we discuss in the new media concentration in which I teach at TX State University in San Marcos. It is the most important conference that I attend each year, introducing me to new ideas that will be affecting media in the future.

This year’s programming was outstanding. From impressive keynote speakers like Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of two important books, The Long Tail and Free, and Tony Hsieh, the CEO of the online shoe retailer Zappos to outstanding panel discussions dealing with the future of social media, trends in journalism, Web design concepts and the direction of overall online experience, SXSW once again proved that Austin is the place to be in March. Additional highlights for me included discussions by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV and Kathy Sierra. Their enthusiasm for online endeavors is infectious and inspiring.

Overall, I think two broad themes emerged from this year’s festivities.

The first is the focus on the user experience (UX). Where five years ago content was considered king, now it’s about what your users get to do on your site. The interaction must be two-way, and it must be relevant to the communities you support. The second theme has to do with the ubiquity of social networks. In her talk entitled “The Future of Social Networks: Social Networks Will Be Like Air, ” Charlene Li explained that we are moving to a universal identity and single social graph in our usage of these networks, and that we will eventually no longer use fragmented platforms and identities. This goes beyond a mere aggregation of existing platforms and requires a few major players to emerge as focal points of this interaction.

In regard to the activity of my students at the festival, I am very proud of the work they did on the blog. I was energized by their enthusiasm coming out of panels and discussing topics, asking questions and interacting with attendees. They worked extremely hard to not only gain knowledge for themselves, but to share that knowledge in the various ways that they have learned in our program, through blogs, video, photos and social media; lots of simultaneous learning and practice. The weeks prior to SXSW included the design and development of our site, promotion via various social media platforms including Twitter (@sxtxstate) and Facebook and the creation of content in the form of previews and tech news updates relevant to SXSW topics. While this activity was supervised by me, the students were completely in charge of the direction and execution. For this, they have a lasting archive of their experiences and something they can reference in the future.

We even tested live stream capabilities by doing a live interview from the convention center each day. You can find the archive of these interviews under the Live Stream tab on the site. We met Jeff and Eric of OrgSync on Sunday, and they were kind enough to spend some time with us talking about their collaborative online campus offerings. In addition, we interviewed panelists from The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as business owners who were in attendance to gain new insight into technology trends.

The SXSWi team, of which several of my former and current students are a part, put on an amazing event each year, and continue to improve with each successive year. I don’t know how they’ll top 2009, but I’m already looking forward to March 2010. If you deal with technology and media in any manner, I highly recommend attending SXSW. And, if you can stick around for the second part of the week, the music’s not too shabby either. See some of the pictures and videos I shot during some of the music showcases at www.onthatnote.com. Hope to see you in Austin next year.

This weekend I had the pleasure of visiting our neighbor to the northwest, Lubbock, TX and one of our largest campuses, Texas Tech University. Tech, a client since May of 2008 boasts nearly 400 student organizations and has been a joy to work with over the past year. Mike Gunn, Assistant Director of Student Organizations, oversees all of the student organizations on campus and did a wonderful job of organizing their annual “Student Organization Academy”. The program held on Saturday, April 4th, offered 12 sessions covering various topics including leadership development, risk management, practical solutions to student organization issues, school spirit, transferring experiences as student leaders into the “real world”, community service, re-energizing your organization, and, of course, ORGSYNC!!

I was pleased to share OrgSync with a captive audience of over 200 student leaders. Students and Staff Advisors were excited to learn about how OrgSync will help them accomplish their missions and goals as organizations, and as always, I was asked many questions that will likely guide future development of our software.

After realizing that our founders and many of OrgSync’s staff are alumni of the University of Texas (which Texas Tech football stole a win from last season), the students there could not resist taking the picture above. Thanks Tech Students and Staff for being such great hosts and for your interest in serving the Tech community through your involvement in student organizations there!! I will look forward to visiting Lubbock again soon.

Last week, Eric and I (Jami Darden) traveled to the great state of New York to visit one of our newest clients, St. John’s University in Jamaica, Queens. St. John’s boasts an undergraduate population of nearly 15,000 students from 42 states, Puerto Rico, District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands and 91 foreign countries. Among its notable alumni are leaders in virtually every industry, including business, medicine, politics, education, professional athletics, journalism, and entertainment. Needless to say, we are delighted to welcome this distinguished institution to the OrgSync family!

Many thanks go out to everyone on campus who not only worked tirelessly over the last several months to make OrgSync a reality for St. John’s student organizations, but also for their efforts arranging the on-site training sessions. We want to especially thank Dana Lezama, president of Student Government, Inc., who spear-headed this effort and was an exceptional host! Also, Frank Jerome, Business Analyst for the Office of Student Affairs, who is working with OrgSync support to create a single sign on solution which will make it convenient for St. John’s students to access OrgSync and their student organizations via “St. John’s Central”.

During our two-day visit, Eric and I conducted 12, 90 minute training sessions where we were able to meet with approximately 140 student leaders. We were also thrilled to share the news of our new strategic partnership with PayPal and are looking forward to providing a comprehensive budgeting and e-commerce solution to all of our clients. Eric was even able to meet with Barbara Duffy who manages all of the budget requests and fund allocations for student organizations at St. John’s, and she has provided us with lots of insight that will help guide the development of our new, more robust treasury module.

We were also very pleased to learn that all student organizations at St. John’s are required to complete a certain number of community service hours in order to be recognized on campus and receive funding from the university. It was quite rewarding to see students’ reactions as we showed them how OrgSync can be used to track their involvement in service events and programs. Their reporting process will now be streamlined and simplified! I definitely saw a sparkle in their eye as they realized that they finally have a way to quantify how their organizations are contributing to the culture of their campus and the surrounding community. We at OrgSync, of course, share their commitment to community service and service learning and will continue to work with our clients to showcase these types of efforts. Stay tuned to future blog posts and check back on our website to learn more about the “GIVE Act” recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Coming from a higher education background, I truly enjoyed interacting with all of the students and staff members at St. John’s. Their energy and commitment to a vibrant campus life is very refreshing and has reminded me of why I got into the business of working with student leaders. I can’t wait for our next on-site training. After a snowy Friday morning in New York, however, I was pleased to return to sunny skies and mid-eighty temperatures in Texas!