Comparison
Club recruitment software for student organizations: what to look for, and free options
A stage-by-stage checklist for clubs and professional fraternities that choose their members, and an honest look at the free and paid options.
Paul PassarelliFounder of Delibity. Former VP of Recruitment, Phi Gamma Nu (Cornell).
On this page
Google Forms and Sheets
Best for a small club with one application round and no interviews.
PNMPulse or ChapterBuilder
Best for fraternity and sorority rush, especially when your national provides it.
Airtable or Notion
Best for an e-board that wants to build its own system and maintain it each year.
Delibity
Best for selective clubs and professional fraternities running applications, chats, interviews and a vote, for free.
Delibity wrote this page, and Delibity is one of the options below. We checked each product's own site on 2026-11-06 and link to every page we used.
What club recruitment software should mean
Club recruitment software, for a selective student organization, means a tool that takes a candidate from application to final vote. Three other kinds of software come up in the same searches, and none of them does that job on its own.
| Kind | What it does | Examples | Fits a selective club? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Selective recruitment pipeline | Applications, chats, interviews, one record per candidate, voting | Delibity; PNMPulse and ChapterBuilder for Greek rush | Yes |
| Membership and engagement | Rosters, events, dues, messages | Campus platforms (CampusGroups, Anthology Engage), Join It, Orbi | Partly: the front of the funnel |
| Forms and databases | Collect answers, store rows | Google Forms and Sheets, Typeform, Airtable, Notion | As parts you assemble yourself |
| Corporate applicant tracking | Job postings and hiring pipelines for companies | Employer hiring tools | No: built for jobs, priced per seat |
"Club recruitment software" also returns sports-club tools that help coaches recruit athletes. Those are a different category entirely.
Corporate hiring tools come up often. They track job applicants through stages, but they assume paid recruiters, job postings and per-seat pricing. They have no coffee chats, no member votes and no handover to a new board each year. The guide to why a corporate applicant tracking system is the wrong tool covers this in detail.
The checklist, stage by stage
Judge any tool by whether it handles each stage of your season, not by its feature list. Here is what to look for at each stage.
What a club recruitment tool should do
- Applications: your own questions, file uploads (résumé, headshot) without forcing a Google sign-in, branching for different tracks, and saved progress on phones
- Events: check-in by QR code that adds attendance to the candidate's record
- Coffee chats: a request form, pairing members to candidates, and an evaluation members fill in after each chat
- Interviews: rooms, weighted rubric criteria or pass/fail items, and scoring during the interview
- The record: one page per candidate with every stage's scores and notes
- Deliberations: a vote per candidate with admit, deny and abstain, recusal, and totals rather than names
- Access: admin and interviewer roles, and access removed the moment someone leaves
- Handover: last season's application and rubric carried into the next one
Access, privacy and handover
Access, privacy and handover matter as much as features, because recruitment data is about students who didn't join yet. Check three things before you pick a tool.
Who can see candidate data
Only active members of your club should see candidates' applications and scores, and interviewers should see only what they need to score. With shared links to forms and sheets, anyone who ever had the link may still have access. The guide to who should see applicant data covers this.
Removing members who graduate
When a member graduates or leaves, their access should end that day. Check whether the tool lets you mark someone inactive in one step, or whether you have to find and remove them from every file.
Keeping past seasons for the next board
Next year's chair should start from this year's application and rubric, not from a blank page. Ask whether the tool keeps past seasons with the club when the board changes. The guide to handing off recruitment has the full list.
The options, compared
The options differ most in what they were built for: Greek rush, general membership, building your own system, or the full selective pipeline. Prices are from each company's own page.
| Option | Price for a student organization | Built for |
|---|---|---|
| Google Forms and Sheets | Free with a Google account | General forms and spreadsheets |
| PNMPulse | $50 for the first recruitment cycle, then $100 a year; custom pricing for councils | Fraternity and sorority recruitment |
| ChapterBuilder (Phired Up) | Free tier: 10 users, unlimited leads, 2 forms; paid tiers; free to some chapters through their national or campus | Fraternity and sorority recruitment |
| OmegaFi recruitment | Offered at no cost through a NIC partnership | Fraternity and sorority recruitment |
| Airtable | Free plan; Team plan $20 per user a month, billed yearly | Building your own database |
| Notion | Free plan; Plus $10 per seat a month | Building your own workspace |
| CampusGroups, Anthology Engage | Sold to the school's student affairs office | Campus-wide organization management |
| Orbi | No subscription for organizations; students pay a fee on paid tickets | Campus events, tickets and memberships |
| Delibity | $0, every feature, no seat limits | Selective recruitment for student organizations |
PNMPulse's pricing page also shows a "$100" first-cycle banner; the plan card says $50 for the introductory cycle.
Google Forms and Sheets
Google Forms and Sheets are free, familiar and flexible, and every member already knows them. Forms stores answers in a Sheet, and you can build almost anything around them with enough effort.
The limits show up in a multi-stage season. A file upload question makes respondents sign in to a Google account, and uploaded files go to the form owner's Drive. Each stage becomes its own form and sheet, so someone has to join them by hand before delibs. Delibity vs Google Forms and Sheets compares the two stage by stage.
PNMPulse, ChapterBuilder and OmegaFi
These three are built for fraternity and sorority recruitment, and they do it well. PNMPulse lists applicant profiles, QR check-in at events, custom forms with résumés, bulk email, real-time sentiment polling, speaking queues and live vote results. ChapterBuilder, from Phired Up, is built by sorority and fraternity members, and some nationals provide it to their chapters at no cost. OmegaFi's recruitment tool is offered free through a partnership with the North American Interfraternity Conference.
For a finance or consulting club, the fit is weaker. Their vocabulary and workflows assume Greek rush, and we didn't find interview rooms with weighted rubrics on their pages. The guides to PNMPulse alternatives and professional fraternity recruitment software go further.
Airtable and Notion
Airtable and Notion let an e-board build its own recruitment system: a table of candidates, views per stage, forms feeding in. When we asked Google's AI Mode in November 2026, it suggested exactly this for selective clubs. It works when one officer enjoys building it.
The cost is upkeep. The system lives in one officer's head, and the free plans have record and member limits. Paid plans are priced per person: Airtable's Team plan is $20 per user a month billed yearly, and Notion's Plus is $10 per seat a month. The guide to Airtable and Notion for club recruitment covers templates and limits.
Campus platforms: CampusGroups and Anthology Engage
Campus platforms are sold to the school, not the club, and handle registration, rosters, events and forms for every organization on campus. If your school uses one, keep your club's profile current there: it's one of the places students look for clubs.
Their pages describe membership management, forms and events, not applications scored by members, interviews or votes. The guide to campus platforms vs a dedicated recruitment tool compares them in detail.
Delibity
Delibity is free recruitment software built for selective student organizations. It covers every stage on the checklist. Candidates fill in a branching application and upload a résumé without a Google account. Members pair coffee chats, check people in at events by QR code, and score interviews live on weighted rubrics. Every candidate gets one transcript, and the club votes live, with recusal.
Delibity is newer and smaller than the Greek tools. It was built with finance and consulting clubs and professional fraternities at Cornell, and 36+ clubs recruited on it in Fall 2026.
Included
- Unlimited applicants and members
- Application builder with branching
- Coffee chat requests and pairing
- Interview rooms, rubrics, live scoring
- Pools, deliberations and live voting
$0 per semester, every feature
How Delibity does this
$0 for every student organization
Every feature is included for every club, with no seat limits and no trial that runs out. Sign-up is with Google, and Delibity never asks for a card.
Delibity makes money from separate products for companies. It doesn't sell candidate data or use it for anything else.
Why it's freeFree vs paid: what "free" usually hides
"Free" in software usually means a free tier with limits, a trial, or someone else paying. Check which one before you build your season on it.
| Kind of free | Example | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| A free tier with limits | Typeform's free plan has a limited number of responses a month; Airtable and Notion free plans have record or member limits | Whether your applicant count fits |
| Free to some chapters | ChapterBuilder through some nationals; OmegaFi through a NIC partnership | Whether your organization qualifies |
| Paid by your school | CampusGroups, Anthology Engage | Whether your school has it, and what it covers |
| Free for every club | Google Forms and Sheets; Delibity | What the company earns from instead |
Delibity is free for every student organization because it makes money from separate products for companies. It doesn't sell candidate data or use it for anything else.
How to pick in one week
You can choose a tool in one week by running one real stage through each option. Do it before your season starts, not during it.
Pick two options at most. Usually your current Forms setup and one tool from the list above.
Rebuild last season's application in the new tool, and have two members apply on their phones.
Score three sample candidates with your real interview rubric, as two different interviewers.
Look at one candidate's full record and ask whether it is what you'd want on screen at delibs.
Check access: add a test member, then remove them, and confirm they lose access.
Decide as an e-board, with next year's chair in the room.
Ask any vendor these questions: Who can see our candidates' data? What happens to our data when the board changes? What do you charge, and when could that change? Do candidates need an account to apply?
How to switch from Forms and Sheets
Switching takes about a week if you start before the season. Keep your current Forms open until the new tool's application is tested, then move one stage at a time.
In Delibity, you can paste your member list to add everyone at once, and upload applications you already collected so they sit next to new ones. Every active member gets an interviewer login. Delibity vs Google Forms and Sheets has a week-one switching checklist.
For the whole season, stage by stage, see how to run club recruitment.
Questions chairs ask
Is there free recruitment software for student organizations?
Yes. Google Forms and Sheets are free but cover only forms and spreadsheets. ChapterBuilder has a free tier and is free to some fraternity chapters through their nationals. Delibity is free for every student organization and covers applications, coffee chats, events, interviews and voting.
What recruitment software do professional fraternities use?
Professional fraternities use a mix: Google Forms and Sheets, Greek recruitment tools such as PNMPulse or ChapterBuilder when their national provides one, and selective-recruitment tools such as Delibity. Check your national's rules first, since some set voting procedures any tool has to follow.
Can we use Airtable or Notion to run club recruitment?
Yes, if one officer will build and maintain the system. Airtable and Notion can hold candidates, stages and forms. The costs are upkeep each year, per-person pricing on paid plans, and a setup that next year's chair has to learn from scratch.
Is an applicant tracking system good for club recruitment?
Usually not. Corporate applicant tracking systems are built for companies hiring employees, priced per recruiter seat, and have no coffee chats, member scoring or votes. Clubs need a tool built around members evaluating candidates and voting.
What should we ask before choosing a recruitment tool?
Ask who can see candidate data, what happens to your data when the board changes, what it costs now and later, and whether candidates need an account to apply. Then run one real stage, such as last season's application, through the tool.
Sources
- Google Docs Editors Help: Add a file upload question: respondents must sign in to a Google account; files are stored in Drive (checked 2026-11-06) support.google.com
- PNMPulse pricing: $50 introductory cycle, then $100 a year; custom for councils (checked 2026-11-06) pnm-pulse-website.pages.dev
- PNMPulse: features listed on the home page (checked 2026-11-06) pnm-pulse-website.pages.dev
- ChapterBuilder, Phired Up: free tier and paid tiers (checked 2026-11-06) phiredup.com
- ChapterBuilder at Alpha Delta Phi: offered at no cost to its chapters (checked 2026-11-06) alphadeltaphi.org
- No Cost Recruitment Solution from OmegaFi, North American Interfraternity Conference (checked 2026-11-06) nicfraternity.org
- Airtable pricing: Team plan $20 per user a month billed yearly (checked 2026-11-06) airtable.com
- Notion pricing: Plus $10 per seat a month (checked 2026-11-06) notion.com
- Typeform pricing: free plan has a limited number of responses a month (checked 2026-11-06) typeform.com
- CampusGroups student organization management, Ready Education (checked 2026-11-06) readyeducation.com
- Anthology Engage: sold to institutions' student affairs offices (checked 2026-11-06) encoura.org
- Orbi for organizations: no subscription; approval-based memberships (checked 2026-11-06) orbi.io