At Miami Dade College (MDC), civic engagement is more than volunteer hours. It’s a campus-wide strategy for student success, democratic participation, and experiential learning.
For Josh Young, College-Wide Director for the Institute for Civic Engagement and Democracy, and Priya Prashad Singh, Director for the Institute at Kendall Campus, the challenge wasn’t passion. The challenge was: how can civic engagement be scaled across 8 campuses efficiently, with effective integration and overall functionality of the host platform?
Before adopting GivePulse, Miami Dade College relied on an internally built system that had served the institution for nearly two decades. But as engagement initiatives expanded across their 8 campuses, the limitations became clear: MDC needed a comprehensive platform to support engagement across all campuses.
“We knew we had to move to a real tech platform. After that process, it was clear to us that GivePulse was the gold standard in higher education.”
- Josh Young
One of MDC’s biggest priorities was scaling its innovative Civic Action Scorecard, a framework designed by Josh Young to encourage students to participate in civic learning beyond traditional service hours.
The program includes 108 “bite-sized civic actions” students can complete to earn points toward recognition and awards. Before GivePulse, the process relied heavily on spreadsheets, paper forms, and manual tracking.
“Everyone loved it, but we were stuck because: how do we scale it?”
- Josh Young
With GivePulse, students can now complete actions directly from their phones, upload reflections, and automatically track progress toward awards. The impact has been transformative.
“In the last two and a half years, we've had over 19,000 civic action scorecard actions completed using the GivePulse platform. So it's really been a game-changer for us.”
- Josh Young
At MDC, GivePulse serves as a strategic planning tool, allowing them to scale, track, and manage student engagement across campuses.
“GivePulse has become our own pulse within our department. It's how we manage all of our data.”
- Priya Prashad Singh
Using GivePulse analytics and reporting tools, the team can evaluate engagement across campuses, departments, faculty, and programs. That visibility allows them to identify gaps, support faculty needs, and strengthen student participation.
“One of our goals is to increase faculty engagement on campus. GivePulse makes it really easy to do that because you can see in one exported document which faculty members have been extremely engaged and which faculty members have not been so engaged.”
- Priya Prashad Singh
The platform also helps MDC demonstrate institutional impact to leadership and academic programs.
“Data is very important everywhere, especially in higher education,” Josh stated. “You have to show what you're doing and show the impact.”
MDC’s use of GivePulse extends far beyond volunteerism.
The institution tracks:
“We want to track and capture all types of civic learning and engagement; the data that we get from GivePulse allows us to be much more strategic.” Josh explained.
This holistic approach supports Miami Dade College’s broader mission of civic engagement and student success while giving students a documented record of their involvement.
As one of the more complex implementations in higher education, MDC’s GivePulse ecosystem includes extensive subgroup structures across campuses, departments, and student organizations.
“It does take a while to learn how to leverage the power that it has,” Josh noted. “But if you dedicate the time and effort, it will exceed your expectations.”
The team continues expanding its use of the platform through faculty workshops, integration efforts, and new engagement initiatives.
And throughout the process, customer support has played a major role.
“Something that we appreciate about GivePulse is the almost 24/7 customer support,” Priya shared. “That support is very much appreciated.”
From scaling civic action to transforming institutional reporting, Miami Dade College demonstrates how GivePulse can help institutions turn engagement into measurable impact.
About GivePulse
GivePulse's mission is to enable everyone in the world to participate and engage in lifting their community to new heights. We do so by providing a platform to list, find, organize, and measure the impact of service-learning, community engagement, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and volunteerism.
Founded in 2012 in Austin, Texas, GivePulse works with 650,000+ groups, including colleges and universities, nonprofits, businesses, K-12/school districts, and cities and municipalities. Together, we connect millions of people in an effort to create positive social change.
Ready to see how we can help you achieve your community engagement goals? Schedule a demo with GivePulse today.