At its February 20 – 22 face-to-face meeting, the members of the National Executive Committee approved a proposal that the Fraternity engage Group Interactive Networks of Gainesville, FL, a known designer and provider of website solutions for other American fraternities and sororities, to provide websites and its GINsystem chapter management tool to affiliates. A formal agreement was signed earlier this month, and we have begun design work with GIN to initialize the project.
This is the second critical piece of the Fraternity’s website and online systems redesign and implementation project known internally as “Sinfonia 2.0.” GIN will work with our internal resources to design 3 custom templates for local websites to provide choice to each affiliate while maintaining a common theme and integration with the www.sinfonia.org website. The websites will offer uniform content from the National Fraternity, while allowing local affiliates to customize the website to provide local content. GIN was chosen because it also provides a set of chapter management features through a proprietary tool called GINsystem, and a private member portal for communications that features the capability to share calendar information, files and announcements and supports both email and SMS communication.
The new websites will also feature improved integration with the National website and membership database, and the architecture allows for fully mobile and social media-friendly access to enable our brothers to access the tools from any mobile device.
The NEC has approved our proposal to offer the websites to chapters and other affiliates free of charge, in order to improve member access to Fraternity resources and reduce the dependency on individual local webmasters who graduate and may not be easily replaced. The new platform comes with full support, and we hope it will eliminate the prevalent number of abandoned and outdated sites currently in existence.
Representatives of GIN will be available in New Orleans at the 55th National Convention from July 8-12, 2015 to demonstrate the templates and tools and work with affiliates to establish their local website and learn how to utilize the new tools. We are pleased to be entering this new phase of development as Sinfonia continues to modernize and advance in the Second Century. Be sure to look for further announcements on www.sinfonia.org.
