Across campus, student organizations often use various social media apps to connect with their members, which can cause members to miss announcements. But ClubConnect, a resident team at The Garage, aims to solve that problem by streamlining communication on a single platform. 

Northwestern students launched ClubConnect at the start of Winter Quarter to centralize club communication on campus. The platform helps users personalize their calendars and explore club pages.

Weinberg junior Jordan Checkoff, CEO and founder of ClubConnect, said every social media app has a feature to support club communication. But, he said these apps aren’t designed with student organizations in mind. 

“Our goal is to take the features for club communication that are scattered across these different social media platforms and put them in one place,” Checkoff said. 

ClubConnect found the average club uses 3.6 apps for communication, which causes about 54% of students to miss events, Checkoff said. He added by centralizing information channels, ClubConnect makes it easier for students to stay up to date.

Boomshaka — NU’s premier dance, drum and rhythm group — is one of 15 clubs currently using the platform. As a member of the group, Checkoff said he experiences ClubConnect “in real time,” receiving notifications on his phone. 

Weinberg senior Harrison Israel, a Boomshaka member, remembers when Checkoff first introduced the app to Boomshaka Fall Quarter. As a testing group, Boomshaka is able to give Checkoff immediate feedback, according to Israel. 

“He keeps asking for us to give him features. When we first started, the RSVP feature wasn’t a thing, but he’s been able to add that in,” Israel said. “It’s also fun to get to be a part of the creation process.” 

Boomshaka also takes advantage of the calendar feature on ClubConnect, Israel said. With the feature, he said club members can see when rehearsals are scheduled. 

Israel said he appreciates the platform’s announcement feature since information can get quickly lost in messaging apps like GroupMe, which many student groups use. 

“You’re able to do announcements that are more official than a group chat, but not necessarily as intense as an email,” Israel said. “You’re also able to see who’s viewed the announcements.”

Boomshaka helped ClubConnect test the waters, but Checkoff said he hopes to see the platform expand to universities nationally.

Medill sophomore Emma Feuer, ClubConnect’s chief marketing officer, wanted to join the platform’s team because she could relate to the problem it aimed to solve. In the past, she has missed club announcements by checking the wrong platform. 

As part of the ClubConnect team, Feuer conducted market research to learn about students’ interactions with club communication last summer. She interviewed students across the country over the phone asking about their experiences finding clubs on their campus, as well as their preferences for campus communication platforms. 

“Talking to them really helped us narrow down what features we wanted to implement in this app and how we wanted to go about marketing it,” Feuer said.

In conversations with NU students, interviewees described frustrations with the timing of club fairs, since they happen just once a quarter, Checkoff said. Students wanted more opportunities to learn about on-campus clubs. To address the concern, ClubConnect allows clubs to customize their own page similar to a booth at a club fair, he said. 

Club fairs with large crowds can also overwhelm students, Checkoff said. ClubConnect provides an alternative, he said, by allowing students to click through and learn about each club at their own pace. 

For Feuer, club fairs are an opportunity to see what students are up to around campus. ClubConnect is like a club fair “at your fingertips,” she said, which spares students the stress of navigating them in person. 

“All you have to do is hit the button, and boom — you’re there!” Feuer said. “It makes it feel like involvement is just around the corner.” 

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @JessicaMa2025

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