Grinnell
Emergency Notifications (InformaCast) and Clery Emergency-Notification / Timely-Warning Policy
Grinnell College delivers campus emergency notifications through InformaCast, a Singlewire mass-notification system that sends text messages, voice messages, and emails; all students and employees are automatically enrolled with the contact information the College has on record, and the system is activated upon confirmation of an imminent threat to the health or safety of the campus community consistent with the Clery Act.
Read the official policyInstitution
Grinnell College
Private Liberal Arts · IA
~1,750 studentsInformaCast
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
InformaCast channel descriptionverbatim
InformaCast sends text messages, voice messages, and emails with up-to-date information, so that people can stay connected and aware during any possible crisis.
- — Defines InformaCast's three delivery channels (SMS, voice, email). Identical wording appeared across multiple official Grinnell-page retrievals (the Emergency Notifications page and the 'Important Information to Know in a Campus Emergency' page).
Automatic enrollmentverbatim
Grinnell College students and employees are automatically enrolled in the InformaCast with the information the College has on record.
- — Establishes automatic enrollment from institutional records, closing the opt-in coverage gap. Identical wording appeared across multiple official Grinnell-page retrievals; community members modify or remove personal contacts via Colleague Self-Service.
Activation thresholdreconstructed
Emergency notification systems are activated upon confirmation of an imminent threat to the health and safety of the GIL community.
- — Sets the activation threshold at an 'imminent threat to the health and safety' of the community ('GIL' = Grinnell-in-London/Grinnell community usage as surfaced). Surfaced via the search index rather than a confirmed live fetch (grinnell.edu returned HTTP 403), so marked isVerbatimConfirmed:false out of caution.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- Per Grinnell's emergency guidance, the InformaCast emergency-notification system is activated upon confirmation of an imminent threat to the health and safety of the campus community; the College states it will immediately notify the campus upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees occurring on campus. Timely warnings are issued separately for Clery-reportable crimes that may pose a continuing threat.
- Who decides
- Grinnell's Campus Safety / Student Affairs safety function administers InformaCast and issues Clery notices. The specific position authorized to confirm a threat and trigger an InformaCast alert was not confirmed verbatim in this review (grinnell.edu blocked automated fetching).
- Timeliness standard
- Grinnell states it will 'immediately' notify the campus community upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation — consistent with the Clery 'immediately, upon confirmation' standard. The exact internally published timing target was not confirmed verbatim.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Grinnell separates the two Clery functions: InformaCast emergency notifications for imminent/ongoing threats to health or safety, and timely warnings for Clery-reportable crimes that may pose a continuing threat. Grinnell publishes an Annual Security Report.
- Testing cadence
- Grinnell periodically reminds the community to verify contact information so they can receive InformaCast alerts and runs alert tests; the exact published periodic test cadence (e.g., per-semester) was not confirmed verbatim in this review.
- Scope & limits
- All students and employees are automatically enrolled with the contact information on record, so college email is the guaranteed-reach floor; full text/voice reach depends on accurate personal phone numbers maintained in Colleague Self-Service. The optional 'Grinnell Campus Alert Button' mobile app complements but does not replace InformaCast enrollment.
ChannelsSmsEmailPhone CallWebsitePush Notification
Analysis
Reading the policy
Grinnell College, a private liberal-arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, runs its campus emergency-notification function on InformaCast, the higher-education mass-notification product from Singlewire Software. Grinnell describes InformaCast as the system that 'sends text messages, voice messages, and emails with up-to-date information' so that the community 'can stay connected and aware during any possible crisis.' This three-channel design (SMS, voice, email) is typical of small residential colleges that lean on contact-record data rather than outdoor sirens.
A defining feature of Grinnell's approach is automatic enrollment. The College states that 'students and employees are automatically enrolled in the InformaCast with the information the College has on record,' closing the opt-in coverage gap that limits keyword-subscription systems. Community members manage or remove personal phone numbers and email addresses through Colleague Self-Service (login required), and the College repeatedly urges faculty, staff, and students to verify that their contact information is current and flagged to receive alert texts. Because enrollment is automatic and tied to institutional records, college-issued email is the guaranteed-reach floor while text and voice depend on accurate personal numbers.
Grinnell frames activation around the federal Clery standard. Per the College's emergency guidance, the emergency-notification system is activated upon confirmation of an imminent threat to the health and safety of the campus community, and Grinnell states it will immediately notify the campus community upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees occurring on campus. Grinnell supplements the campus-wide InformaCast system with an optional mobile safety app featuring a 'Grinnell Campus Alert Button' usable anywhere on College property — the app complements, but does not replace, the automatic InformaCast enrollment.
Grinnell distinguishes the two Clery functions in the standard way — emergency notifications for imminent/ongoing threats and timely warnings for Clery-reportable crimes that may pose a continuing threat — and publishes an Annual Security Report through its Campus Safety office. The verbatim-confirmed excerpts below (the InformaCast channel description and the automatic-enrollment sentence) appeared with identical wording across multiple official Grinnell-page retrievals. The named position authorized to trigger an alert and the published periodic test cadence were not surfaced byte-for-byte in this review (grinnell.edu and ASR PDFs 403-block automated fetching here), so those fields are reconstructed from indexed snippets and flagged where uncertain.
Takeaways
Key findings
Grinnell's emergency-notification system is InformaCast (Singlewire), delivering text, voice, and email; the brand was corroborated across multiple official Grinnell pages.
All students and employees are automatically enrolled with the contact information the College has on record; community members manage personal contacts via Colleague Self-Service.
The system is activated upon confirmation of an imminent threat to the health and safety of the campus community, consistent with the Clery standard.
An optional mobile safety app with a 'Grinnell Campus Alert Button' complements — but does not replace — the automatic InformaCast enrollment.
The named decision authority and exact published test cadence could not be confirmed verbatim (grinnell.edu and ASR PDFs blocked automated fetching); two excerpts were confirmed verbatim across multiple official-page retrievals.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
1 documented time Grinnell’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Official
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningprivate-liberal-artsiowainformacastsinglewireautomatic-enrollment
Added 2026-06-22Updated 2026-06-22Via ingestion