Solution for Discussion Board / Forum / Classifieds

Ginette Buffone

Hi, over the past couple of years, this request keeps coming up for us. People in our community want a space where they can post various things for others in our community to see. For parents, it was things like posting summer camp recommendations or pediatric dentist recommendations. For faculty/staff, it's things like moving sales or mechanic recommendations or come out and support their art exhibit / band outside of school. Has anyone figured out a way to use the Blackbaud tools for something like this? Or even suggestions for a third party tool would be helpful. One request is that whenever a new post was created, there would be the ability to email/text people, so people didn't have to actively visit the page to see if anything new was posted.

Thanks, in advance, for any guidance you can offer on this.

P.S. A newer admin at our school used Schoology at her old school and gave that as an example. Here's a link explaining the functionality (i.e. create a group and anyone in the group can post an “update.”):

Ravendra Persaud

At my school we have used an opt-in only Google group for these types of community announcements. Members can choose how to receive the information and can ask the group manager to add them.

@Ginette Buffone

Ben Taylor

@Ginette Buffone

We have been building a community group for exactly this purpose. We've employed two strategies:

1. If you want to vet the information first have a email group list that then can decide to post things to topic pages using the links function. There are also “discussion” tiles that can be added where people can freely post.
2. OR embed a padlet into topic pages, and make links from the bulletin board to those topics. Padlet, if configured correctly, will send notifications if people have responded to questions or requests.

Regardless our strategy is to put the faculty in the group, and then train them to know how to control their notification settings. That way the announcement feature can have a nuanced application:

• members of the group with notifications on will get pinged via email when group administrators post a monthly update on what's new on the site.
• members of the group who have notifications off will still be able to see the announcement but will not get an email

The other advantage here is that events posted on the bulletin board populate the calendar, which can be viewed within blackbaud, or streamed to something like google calendar.

Hope that helps!

Ben

Ben Taylor

@Benjamin Taylor

Here's an image of the bulletin board, those tiles then link into the topic pages, which have embedded padlets, or combinations of links and discussion tools that are built in features of a topic page in blackbaud community groups