September 2026 CampusESP Feature Launch
With the new school year in swing, and new students and families settling in, we're releasing new features to help you improve the student and family experience!
We're SO excited to introduce...
AI Text Responder 🤖 extends the reach of your AI Assistants, giving students and families instant answers via SMS (no need to log in to the portal!)
Discussion Board Enhancements 💬 include a simplified Quickstart setup, support for Trusted Contributors, improved post pinning and editing, and more
Orientation Management Enhancements 🎓 provide families with guided learning modules, personalized checklists, and tailored next steps all in one place
Parent Giving Enhancements 🎁 include a new Raiser's Edge API integration, an ROI dashboard with enriched fiscal year reporting, gift attribution, and more
Event Management Enhancements 🎟️ include flexible event sessions and the ability to create and print personalized name badges
Keep reading for all the details and how-to's!
Broaden access to your on-demand AI Assistant with the AI Text Responder
A portal login wall can be a barrier when students and families are looking for urgent support. So, to offer easier access, users can now text their AI Assistantfor real-time answers. With overwhelming Family AI Assistant usage this summer – over 150,000 AI conversations across 300 colleges! – we're continuing to grow our AI capabilities ✨
With the AI Text Responder, you can:
Choose when AI responds: Pause AI Text Responder for sensitive messages
Step in when needed: Staff can take over any conversation being handled by AI
Get started with 0 setup: It uses your existing training sources and prompts
Customize prompts by campaign: Add unique instructions for certain campaigns
For anyone who has purchased a Family AI Assistant + Text Messages, your AI Text Responder is already activated and ready to go!
Spend less time managing Discussion Boards – and more time building community
In the year since we launched Discussion Boards, 163 colleges have used them to spark more than 25,000 exchanges 🤯 We’ve been listening to your feedback along the way, and our latest enhancements help you:
Launch Discussion Boards faster with Quickstart, which includes ready-to-use starter posts and email launch communications
Assign Trusted Contributor badges to specific users, making reliable peer guidance easy to identify
Keep important info front and center with the ability to edit and pin posts
Include Discussion Board activity in Parent Promoter Score™for a fuller picture of family engagement
Manage notification settings directly from each Discussion Board, including digest emails and reported content alerts
Take full control: AI moderation not your thing? A new setting allows you to manually review all posts and comments before anything gets published
Remember, you can always ask your Admin AI Assistant for help using any of these new features! 🤖
Give every family a personalized path through orientation
Incoming families need frequent information, deadline nudges, and clear next steps throughout the college transition. With this in mind, we’ve designed 3️⃣ BIG new orientation management features for all CampusESP for Family Communication customers:
Learning Modules: Create self-paced educational experiences using videos, text, and quizzes to prepare families for their student's transition to college
Personalized Checklists: Give families tailored to-do lists, send reminders about important deadlines, and track completion
Event Groups: Automatically assign families to orientation small groups based on specific criteria such as student college or major
PS – These features are also being used by over a dozen colleges to helpstudents transition to college with our new CampusESP for Student Orientation solution!
Measure greater parent giving impact with our new Raiser's Edge API and ROI Dashboard
Advancement teams need visibility into what drives parent giving, where gifts come from, and how it changes over time. That's why we've invested in deeper data integration and more powerful gift reporting. Our latest CampusESP for Parent Giving updates include:
Raiser's Edge API enriches integration with new fields like gift amount and designation, allowing more tailored messaging in CampusESP. With nightly data syncs, there's no more need for manual data imports
New Parent Giving ROI Dashboard includes new widgets that measure donors, donations, and dollars by fiscal year, as well as gift designation and attribution
CampusESP gift attribution: Measure that CampusESP is *really* sourcing gifts by tracking whether a parent donates after clicking on a CampusESP campaign
Match records by unique ID instead of email to ensure fewer duplicate accounts and accurate data syncing, even when a parent email address changes
📣 CampusESP for Parent Giving customers – we'll be in touch about data integration improvements! You can also email us at support@campusesp.com to get started sooner.
Deliver seamless events from Orientation to Family Weekend
With over 175,000 event registrations in CampusESP last year, our customers have shared great ideas on how to improve events 😊 We heard ya ... and we're excited to launch our latest Event Management enhancements!
Name Badging: Design and print personalized name badges within CampusESP for simpler check-in and guest management. Read our user guide here!
Sessions: Offer multiple time slots for a particular event and give attendees the flexibility to change their selected session
Event Check-in Admin: Give staff and volunteers the access they need to check in and manage attendees without giving them broader Platform Admin permissions
It's not too late to use Name Badging and Event Check-in Admin for your fall events!
Wrapping up with some cherries on top 🍒
Export Chat History and satisfaction ratings from the Family AI Assistant to get a better look at how students and families are using AI.
AI Assistant activity is now factored into Parent Promoter Score to better identify students with a high likelihood to enroll, families with a high likelihood to give, or potentially at-risk students.
Templated Emails pre-built by the CampusESP Team are imported into your platform to make it even easier to schedule common email types.
Membership Management Enhancements now support creating multiple membership forms with their own products, pricing, and unique links.
Blackbaud Integrated Payments is another payment gateway we now support integration with to further connect CampusESP with your advancement workflows.