Community Partnerships: University of Arkansas - GivePulse Blog

300+ community partnerships, over 200 student programs and clubs, 17,000 engaged students, faculty and staff, 100,000 impact stories, and 300,000 service hours with an estimated impact of over $8 Million.

Access the recording here.

This is a brief story of University of Arkansas’s (UArk) community engagement impact.  

A few years ago the Center for Community Engagement of the University of Arkansas embarked on a journey to enhance volunteer and community engagement initiatives.

Embedded into the University’s culture is the institution’s interest and goal to scale their community partnerships.

For a large anchor institution, the university has deep-rooted partnerships with public and private organizations. With that, brings complexities that make managing community engagement for the diverse set of partnerships difficult, for instance:

1. An inflexible legacy database
2. Multiple liabilities and existing partnership agreements
3. An archaic matching and management portal

To address the above complexities, the institution debated whether to develop something internally would be better than using multiple tools… or is there one tool out there that would encompass most, if not all, of the University’s requirements.  After due diligence and analyzing all the technology options available in the market, they chose one platform to address all their complex concerns and additional features that would improve processes and help expand all community engagement programs. Specifically, the system they chose enabled the following:

1. Flexible Database: A multi-tenant relational database that can integrate with other systems and customized to capture all types of data for reporting outputs, relationships, activities, and impact.
2. Workflow & Form Management: A workflow to accept and approve customized liabilities and agreements between its volunteers and community partnerships annually, semesterly, or a unique defined duration.
3. Modern, Mobile-Friendly Portal: A responsive website that is accessible for all devices (and downloadable in the app stores) allowing students, faculty, and staff to be matched with community partner profiles and opportunities as well as having a way to update and track their engagement.
4. Free capabilities for nonprofit agencies: A version for community partners to leverage for their own volunteer management, reporting, and tracking purposes.
5. Partnership Management: One place for different departments, clubs, programs, and initiatives to track their own separate relationships with their unique partners.

The above abilities have enabled the institution and its broader community to come together using technology to scale their operations collectively. To view the Center for Community Engagement of the University of Arkansas’s portal, and how it’s implemented, you can visit https://uark.givepulse.com

To learn more, please let us know, we would be happy to introduce you to the UArk team and will be sharing more about collective impact and networks. You are also welcome to schedule a call with our higher education success team. 

In case you missed the recording or link at the top, here is a recent recording (Dec 2018) of UArk’s work. Click here to access.

To learn more about how GivePulse can help you make a difference in your community, schedule a call.