Client Expectations

The Serve IT clinic aims to ensure that both our student interns and nonprofit partners are benefiting from our collaboration. To make sure our interns are learning valuable skills from their project work, there are expectations each client must be able to maintain during their time working with the clinic. Our clinic also aims to maintain our own end of the expectations, coaching students to return communications quickly and follow through on tasks, as well as provide support when students get stuck. Each group of students is overseen by an undergraduate Team Lead and a staff member “coach” who supports the team. If students fail to perform as expected, please contact your Team Lead or a clinic staff member right away at serveit@indiana.edu so we can help address the issue.

General

• Client must provide students with an orientation/introduction to their organization, whether that is in person on-site or in a short presentation. Students will do better work if they understand how their client works and what their mission is.
• Provide a healthy, professional interpersonal working environment for students.
• If your agency offers volunteer opportunities, provide students with those opportunities to do direct service.
• After the site is up and live, your agency may need to hire services later for providing emergency support for site crashes that occur during summer and holiday breaks and weekends.
• Students may need occasional reminders. Some clients have found that students do better once the client point of contact takes on a co-educational guidance role. We recognize this isn’t for everyone and strive to provide enough guidance on our end that this is not too onerous.
• Students may not travel outside Monroe County to deliver service or for meetings but can use Zoom or meet on the IU Bloomington campus or other locations in Bloomington.

Communication

• Provide one liaison staff member or volunteer who can devote 1-2 hours each week coordinating with the student team.
• Provide prompt communication feedback (within 2 business days).
• Meet weekly or bi-weekly in person (or via web) in Bloomington with the student team.

Decision-making

• Point of contact must be empowered by the agency to make decisions on behalf of the organization regarding the project type.
• Point of contact must have the authority to require the presence of key decision-makers in meetings that may impact their workflow.

Timelines

• Projects may span multiple semesters, depending on the size and scope. Keep this timeline in mind as you apply. You can prioritize some content with the students and release your site in chunks, if desired.
• Be aware that adding features later will push the project into further semesters. If this happens, we may need to re-evaluate and change our scope of work and timelines.
• When projects do span semesters, it can take up to a month for new Team Leads to get up to speed. We do try to keep students and projects together across semesters, when possible.
• In summer, we drop down to a skeleton crew. Not all projects will be able to be worked on during this time, so some will be shelved until the following fall.

Content

• Must be ready to provide or have access to content such as imagery, text, videos, data etc if applicable to your project.
• High quality photos and logos will likely be needed to enhance your site. If you don’t have any, be sure to mention this right away and students might be able to help.