Check out these tips to make sure your Bates Engage group is ready and welcoming to new and prospective members! As always, ensure you discuss changes you want to make to your group with your group’s other officers before you make the changes.

1. Check your auto validation settings. By default, all Bates Engage groups are set to require manual validation of new members – if someone wants to join your group, a club officer would have to approve their membership. If you want to change this:
   • Go to your group’s Officer Dashboard
   • Select the Settings module
   • Select the Access & Privacy tab
   • Under Auto Validation, select “People from the same College/School are auto-validated.”

This will allow any new members to join easily, without extra work from you!

2. IMPORTANT: Change new member notification settings. By default, all group officers receive an email notification when new members join your Bates Engage group. Due to the high number of new members that typically join during each Bates Leads Clubs, Orgs, and Jobs Fair, we recommend you turn off these notifications. To do so:
   • Select the “Account” dropdown menu at the top right of the home screen (it might have your picture on it, if you uploaded one).
   • Scroll down and select “Notification Settings.”
   • For each club you’re an officer of, scroll to the “Officer-Only Notifications” section and uncheck the boxes for “new member.”
   • Note that you need to do this for every club you’re an officer of.
      
3. Make your group’s landing page its About page. By default, all Bates Engage groups have the Home page as their landing page – this is the page that everyone who is not a group officer sees when they navigate to your group. The Home page shows things like Channels, Members, and Upcoming Events. That said, at the beginning of the year, things might seem a little sparse to prospective members. We recommend changing the landing page to the About page. To do this:
   • Go to your group’s Officer Dashboard
   • In the left sidebar select Group Page.
   • At the top, select Settings (with a wrench icon).
   • Under Other Settings, select “Make ‘About’ the Landing Group Page.”
      
4. Ensure your group’s logo, cover photo, and mission are up to date. To get new folks interested in your group, you’ve got to draw them in with an attractive logo, cover photo, and mission. Show your group’s pride and passion by ensuring these items are updated! You can find the correct sizes for logos and cover photos on Bates Engage here. To update them:
   • Go to your group’s Officer Dashboard
   • Select the Settings module
   • Select the Basics tab

Finally, you can also find instructions on how to do a variety of essential tasks in Bates Engage via the How Do I… page here.