Duke Impact

Team Leader:

Linda Peng

Team Information:

David Estrin, Lauren Brown, Arjun Khanna, Junliang Zhu

The Idea:

www.dukeimpact.org is a LIVE, newly launched online social network that offers the tools to help student groups and individuals at Duke University connect, scale, and participate in volunteer activities locally and globally.

THE ISSUE:
Think of the countless opportunities to “be engaged” at Duke. (And we’re not just talking about DukeEngage or the 70+ student service organizations under DPS… we’re talking about YOU raising funds for Habitat and Humanity through your fraternity or sorority, going on an alternative Spring Break service trip with your small group, spending a summer doing research in Uganda, or spending 8 hours a week with patients right here in Durham Regional hospital…)
Altogether, Dukies are actually making quite an impact on the world. But when was the last time this impact was measured? Also, how easy is it – really – to keep up to date with the most recent activities of a student group, or the most recent accomplishments of a group of volunteers, unless one was lucky enough to have signed up for their listserv at the twice-a-year activities fair?
Too much of our information about student engagement comes from disorganized e-mail blasts, hit-or-miss flyering, Facebook event spamming, and infrequently updated websites.
www.dukeimpact.org is an online social network that aims to solve this problem by giving students a hub for sharing information and announcements, finding their interests, and collaborating in a much more efficient way.

WHAT THE WEBSITE OFFERS:

• Communication and Collaboration (available to all logged in users)
• Group members can upload PDFs, Word Docs, powerpoints, and images under the “Documents” tab of a group. If the group is public, these documents will be shared on the left sidebar.
• Start new forum discussion topics and “like” forum posts.
• Send private messages or “@mention” other users of the site.
• “Friend” or “follow” activities of other users on the site.
• Create events and invite others to register to attend them.
• Post #status #updates/announcements to your personal profile or to a group you’ve joined. Messages posted to a group will automatically appear on the group wall.
• Comment on, “like,” or “favorite” status updates. Also “share” them on Facebook/Twitter/Buzz.
• Impact Measurement
• Input the # of hours you volunteered and the organization you volunteered with on the “volunteerism tracker” page. At the end of the semester we’ll count all the hours and announce it on the site.
• Scope out the landscape of civic engagement at Duke
• Coming soon: Comprehensive FAQ for groups and individuals
• The footer of every page on the site shows a directory of all the student groups related to civic engagement on campus. Note: because the site is still in beta launch, many of the group profiles have yet to be created.
• WHY WE NEED YOUR VOTE ON DUKE CHANGEWORKS:
• Since www.dukeimpact.org will be owned by Duke University, we need funding to help us satisfy Duke OIT VMware Server Hosting fees, which will cost $250/year or more. The student team managing the site next year may also use any additional funding to hold contests on the site and reward active student volunteers and student groups.

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