Raftr in the News

Academica – Queen’s University has launched the new First-Year Foundation program to help new undergraduate students transition to university life.

KTVU Mornings on 2 The Nine – Sue Decker, the CEO of the San Francisco-based Raftr, spoke to Mornings on 2 The Nine about her company’s solutions to colleges to keep college students active in their classes and campus life.

Business Wire – Raftr, the community-first student engagement platform, announced that Saint Louis University-Madrid Campus nearly doubled its incoming fall 2021 class after deploying the Raftr platform. By providing real-time insights on engagement patterns with admitted students and their families, Raftr demonstrated its significant power to increase yield, reduce melt, and maximize university enrollment.

The Charlotte Post – “So, that actually helped a lot with making friends, and also using the Raftr app helped because you can click on different people’s names and chat with them and everything. So, it kind of helped me come out of my shell as far as meeting new people.” – Jaleah Ladson

Forbes – “Edtech companies that can facilitate digital community building across the physical boundaries of campuses will benefit from this trend of extending centers of excellence.”

UK Time News – Budgets remain tight, staff turnover high and operating conditions uncertain as the Delta variant rages on. Edtech companies must be able to achieve one or more of the following goals – increasing staff productivity, reducing expenses, or generating new revenue – given these realities.

Washington Latest – Cates, Decker and Lee know what they’re talking about. People listen to them. And for purposes of peeking behind the curtains of education markets, it’s good to be able to hear what they have to say.

EdTech Chronicle – Raftr, the community-first student engagement platform, today announces unprecedented growth across the globe. In addition to more than doubling the number of universities using Raftr in the past year, activity on the platform has almost tripled, demonstrating even deeper engagement from students who are finding significant value in their communities.

Higher Ed Dive – Raftr’s comprehensive platform supports all of these connection points within a single, highly customizable space to nurture the full lifecycle of the student journey – from admissions through alumni.

Owl Ventures – Communication is key to students. It’s critical to ensure your university has a reliable way to foster university communications as a way to disseminate information to students, continuously keep them informed and feel a sense of inclusion of the conversations around what’s happening in their new campus community.

The Queen’s University Journal – Residence programming began on Sept. 6 after move-in finished. This year, all programming is happening online through a new communication platform called Raftr, which consolidates all of the information students living in residence need.

Medium – Raftr is optimized for college communities and has tools for college administrators, faculty, and student leaders to engage with their student bodies. Its mission is much deeper than simply creating a better online service; rather, it addresses some fundamental human needs and wants. It is a mission more pertinent than ever in this post-Covid world.

Bloomberg – Sue Decker, CEO at Raftr, discusses offering the social network platform free of charge to colleges and universities amid the coronavirus outbreak. She also talks about her time serving on corporate boards, including at Costco, and why some businesses need to have an online playbook.

EdTech – Determining a timeline for when higher education will go back to “normal” is an aimless guessing game. Will it be weeks? Months? Years? For colleges and universities, the sudden shift away from traditional classroom spaces has upended typical teaching tactics. Even schools with minimal online infrastructure must now deliver distance learning at scale.

EdTech – With colleges and universities shuttered and in remote learning mode, there’s a lot to figure out. Transitioning from in-classroom interactions to online or virtual education isn’t an easy task. Choosing the right solutions requires an understanding of what will help faculty connect with students to achieve their goals.

The PIE News – A number of ed tech companies around the world – and the country of Estonia – are offering free services to universities, schools and students to limit the disruption to learning caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Demand is also being satisfied by companies like Silicon Valley-based higher ed tech company Raftr which is offering its messaging and notifications platform to colleges and universities free of charge through the end of the academic year.

Business Wire – Silicon Valley-based higher ed tech company Raftr announced today that it will offer its messaging and notifications platform free of charge through July 1, 2020 to colleges and universities, many of which are facing disruption and dislocation as a result of COVID-19 concerns. Each institution’s network is entirely private, limited to that community’s constituents.

Inside Higher Ed – As the new coronavirus outbreak prompted college after university to start shifting classes online — either for a few weeks or for the remainder of the spring semester — education technology companies lined up to say they could help.