Clubs
Channels are in beta and not switched on for every account yet. Everything here is built and describes exactly how it works — but if you don't see a Channels section in your club yet, that's why. Nothing to do to prepare: when it turns on, you add channels to the club you already have.
What they are
Tools, not more chat.
A channel lives inside a club alongside its chat. A Schedule holds dates with RSVPs. A Vote runs a secret ballot and reveals results. A Sign-up collects who's bringing what. They're built for the job rather than being a message you keep scrolling back to find.
How you add them
Channels appear when you create a club and in the Channels section of an existing one. Clubs reads what you wrote about your org and suggests a handful — accept those, or browse the full menu.
The menu is organised by what you're trying to do, not by feature name: Plan, Coordinate, Create, Decide, Play and Health. Every one gets a name and a purpose line you can rewrite, so Minutes can be Senate minutes.
Install five, not twenty-five
There are around a hundred channel types. Installing forty is the fastest way to make a club feel abandoned — empty channels read as a dead org.
Install the ones that replace something you're already doing badly somewhere else. Add the sixth the week you actually need it. A club with five busy channels looks alive; a club with twenty empty ones looks like it folded in October.
If you install nothing else
The five that suit almost any club.
They cover what every organization does every week: tell people things, meet, take attendance, and decide something.
Announcements
Official updates from the organizers, in a place that isn't forty messages deep.
Schedule
Rehearsals, gigs and meetings with RSVP and a simple weekly repeat.
Roster
Who's who — roles and status, with a bench or subs view.
Sign-up
Who's in, who's bringing what. Dietary needs surface on their own.
Vote
Secret ballot — nominate, everyone votes, results appear on reveal.
Then add what your org actually is
Real channel names, by kind of club.
Pick the row closest to yours. These are the actual names in the menu.
Who sees what
Ranks, and locking the few that need it.
Build your exec board as roles
Create the roles your constitution already names — Exec, Officers, Leads, Members — and assign people from Manage roles.
Each role carries permissions: Manage channels, Manage roles, Manage members. Give officers the first and stop being the only person who can set anything up.
Lock three, leave the rest open
Press and hold a channel and choose Who can access to limit it to specific roles. A channel with no roles set is open to the whole club — the right default for most.
Worth locking: Ledger (money), Minutes if your board discusses people, and any Decisions channel where a vote isn't public yet. Over-locking is how you end up with members who never open the app.
The rule that makes channels work
Every channel needs an owner and a rhythm. Announcements gets posted to on Sundays by the president. Schedule gets next week's dates on Fridays. A channel nobody is responsible for is just a folder — and if you assign the rhythm to a role rather than a person, it survives your officer turnover in April.
The question people ask
Channel, or a whole team?
- Does it need its own application and its own roster? If yes, it's a team — a pipeline branch. If no, it's a channel.
- A competition squad that holds tryouts and has a different set of people is a team.
- The social committee — eight of your existing members planning things — is a channel.
- When in doubt, channel. Every team is a separate roster to recruit for and a separate chat to keep alive. Branching too eagerly is the more common mistake by a distance.
The rest of it
Channels are one of three.
Pipelines
Put teams under one umbrella. Members see them on their deck; strangers see the front door.
how pipelines work →Clubs Contact
Post to Clubs by email. Register the address you already send announcements from and mail them in.
how Contact works →For schools
Running student organizations on Clubs, end to end — plus a dashboard for activities offices.
the school guide →