Requests for Help: Turn One Ask Into Many Student Opportunities
Every counselor knows the email. "Dear parents and alumni — we're looking for work-shadowing hosts for Year 12 in October. Please get in touch!" Then: forty replies scattered across an inbox, a spreadsheet nobody updates, and three willing volunteers who never heard back.
Your community wants to help. What's been missing is the machinery. Today we're launching Requests for Help — a structured way to ask your community for support, manage every offer in one place, and turn the best ones into real student opportunities.
Ask in two minutes
Staff create a request through a three-step wizard: what you're asking for, who should see it, review and send. That's it — a request goes out in about two minutes, not an afternoon of mail-merge.
Distribution works two ways, and you can use both at once:
- Direct invitations — email specific contacts, contact groups, or even external addresses that aren't in your contacts yet
- The Contribute feed — alumni, parents, and professionals see open requests from your school right inside TEX, with a one-click "I can help" button
Creating a request takes three steps: what you need, who sees it, send.
Zero-login offers
Here's the detail that makes response rates work: invitees don't need an account to respond. Every invitation carries a unique secure link to a public offer page — a busy alumna can tap the link in her email, say "I can host two students in October," and be done in under a minute. No password, no sign-up wall between goodwill and a concrete offer.
Community members respond through a secure personal link — no account required.
From offer to opportunity — with safeguarding built in
All responses land in one triage table on the request's detail page: who's interested, who's qualified, who needs a follow-up. Staff work offers through a clear pipeline, with notes and bulk email along the way.
When an offer is ready, one click converts it into a published student-facing opportunity. And because these opportunities involve real students and real adults, the conversion step is a deliberate safeguarding checkpoint: staff must confirm they've vetted the provider and record a vetting note before anything goes live. Every converted opportunity keeps a visible link back to the community offer it came from.
One request can fan out into many opportunities — a single "who can offer work shadowing?" ask might become five separate placements from five different hosts.
Also in this release: your own opportunity types
Opportunity types are no longer a fixed platform list. Each school can now add custom types, rename the defaults, and hide the ones it doesn't use — so your opportunity dropdown finally matches how your school actually talks about placements, programs, and events.
Key takeaways:
- Broadcast a structured ask to your community in about two minutes
- Community members respond through a secure link — no login required
- Triage offers in one place and convert the best into student opportunities
- A mandatory vetting confirmation keeps safeguarding in the loop
- Opportunity types are now customizable per school
Ready to find out how much your community has been waiting to help? Request a demo and we'll set up your first Request for Help together.