Starting blocks

I'm so ready for a summer of linking thousands of students to churches as they transition to university. For years, Rich has been in eager anticipation of a platform capable of serving the vision of Global Student Linkup; that wherever a student goes to study in the world - there's a local church ready to welcome them.

Two years ago we started talking about how we could make that happen. 18 months ago we gathered a crack team of specialists to do the business. Today I'm very excited to say that it's ready, we're on the starting blocks. Here are a few behind the scenes insights into how it's happened.

Curry and white boards

It started with many curry infused and white board fuelled discussions with the early team of Jonny, Paul, Rich and myself. Soon we were ready to start mapping the app out visually. Cue Chris, who turned our scribbles into something that actually looked like an app.

Paul began work on our Android app, and before long we began to see the app taking shape & functioning. While Paul was cracking on with Android, we were growing increasingly desperate for an iOS developer. We spent many weeks and months searching for the right person. Then a short conversation with a friend brought the answer. We were introduced to John & over a Brum curry, we discovered that we'd had found our iOS developer. 

The Story board

Cloudforce

My focus was on shifting Fusion's web infrastructure to a robust and scalable platform both for churches & students and the Fusion team. After investigating many CRM applications, we settled on Salesforce. We consulted with three other charities who were using it as well as James & Al at Integritec; it was clear it was the right tool for our team. I completed a similar exercise in choosing a new mass mail provider; MailChimp and with geeky enthusiasm was very pleased to see how easily Salesforce and MailChimp integrated. Jonny developed utilised Salesforce's API to send website and Student Linkup data into Salesforce.

Data Mining and Migration

That led to hours of data mining and mapping leading to a successful migration of more than 20,000 contacts & 2,000 churches and organisations into our new database. Hours of Kelly's and student volunteer time improved accuracy and integrity of our data. We spent a pizza-fuelled evening collecting locations of thousands of universities across the globe thanks to student volunteers Harry, Rachel, Alan & others.

Essential to my project management of this undertaking has been Jonny, whose ruthless nose for scope creep and ninja skills for making order out of chaos, has made it possible. Between Jonny and myself, we've meticulously rebuilt our website on a new robust and scalable CMS. On the surface it doesn't look different, but under the hood it's got a whole new engine.

The fruit of all this is a robust and scalable platform ready for use in the UK this summer and to roll out internationally come autumn 2014 & beyond. We've got a Student Linkup app which will transform how churches and students communicate. Students who are actively communicating, searching and engaged with local churches before they've even left for university.

Internally as a Fusion team we've overhauled how we use technology, data and communicate with churches and students. Information gathering, maintenance and presentation are key for effective communication with stakeholders, as well as reporting on progress as a team. We've now got a tool to do that... internationally.

So far 69 students have started using the app which has generated 604 messages between churches and students. We've sent 4,775 notification emails, had 8,101 API requests via the app. And we've barely gotten started.

In 2007 I went to uni in Derby and was quickly welcomed and committed to a local church via Student Linkup. Last year my sister went to uni and quickly committed to a local church, thanks to Student Linkup. These stories are amongst the 16,000+ students who have used Student Linkup since it started in 1999. Now we're on the starting blocks of Global Student Linkup - expect to see these stories exponentially increase, globally!

Are you going to uni?

Linkup now

Are you a church leader?

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Matt Fisher

Operations Manager

Matt’s role is to plan, manage and administrate the infrastructure of Fusion. He is married to Jess, lives in Leicester and loves being in the great outdoors.