Hofstra University’s Success Story with Hive

Founded in 1935, Hofstra University is based on Long Island, 25 miles east of New York City. The university serves more than 10,000 students and has 13 schools and a variety of departments, academic institutes, and centers.

Hofstra’s Marketing and Communications division supports schools and departments across the campus. While the division handles marketing-related functions—including events, website updates, press releases, and more—it is a centralized university division that plays a critical role in supporting strategic communications across the institution. The division reports directly to the President of the university. While much of the team’s work is cyclical, it also manages large-scale university events such as Commencement, the annual Gala, and fundraisers. The pace is fast, the work is high-volume, and efficiency, organization, and collaboration are essential.

We caught up with the team at Hofstra and Joanne Augustin—an independent workflow consultant and Hive Partner who advised on the division’s implementation—to learn how Hive is helping them manage and streamline operations.

Before Hive: Building a New University Division and Defining Project Needs

Before adopting Hive, Hofstra had a University Relations division that handled marketing alongside other functions. When a new president joined the university, there was a renewed focus on raising Hofstra’s national profile, and a formal Marketing and Communications division was established as a distinct, strategic function.

Terry Coniglio joined in February 2023 as the Vice President for Marketing and Communications to lead this newly structured division.

“When I came, the division wasn’t really seen as a strategic partner,” Terry explains. “It was mostly ad hoc requests—flyers, website updates, email sends, social media posts. There was little cross-functional collaboration, and 95% of communication happened via email.”

At the time, the team had no project management solution in place—relying instead on Microsoft Teams and email. Recognizing an opportunity to build systems from the ground up, Terry brought in Joanne Augustin, a trusted partner from a previous role, to help assess the team’s needs and identify the right solution.

Joanne conducted a thorough audit and ultimately recommended Hive.

“The opportunity before us was that we had nothing—no legacy system—so we had a blank slate to build our ideal,” Terry says.

Why Hive: Forms, Automation, and Proofing Power

Hive Forms

Hive Forms allow users to submit requests via customizable online forms that automatically generate projects and action cards within Hive.

“In project management, everything starts with intake,” says Joanne. “Hive Forms were a game-changer—they’re flexible, customizable, and the conditional logic helped consolidate multiple intake forms into one streamlined entry point.”

Hive Automate

Hive Automate lets teams create multi-step workflows across platforms. These automations—or “recipes”—kick off actions based on trigger events.

“Hive Automate sealed the deal for me,” Joanne shares. “I knew I could use it to automate not just the intake process, but the creation of project templates and workflows as well. That meant less manual setup and more consistency for the team.”

Proofing and Approvals

Hive’s integrated Proofing and Approvals feature allows stakeholders to provide feedback, comment, and approve digital and print materials in a single location.

Given the volume of content produced by the division, this functionality was crucial. “Proofing and Approvals have been a big time-saver,” Terry explains. “Everything is centralized, which prevents version control issues and saves us from endless email threads.”

Inside Hofstra’s Hive Workflow

The division organizes work using a parent-child project model—each area of focus (like digital marketing, advertising, or print collateral) has a parent project, and incoming requests create child projects within those.

Forms embedded on the division’s webpage route submissions directly into Hive. These include requests for flyers, digital signage, website updates, event support, and more.

Managing Cyclical and Ad Hoc Work

Cyclical requests are submitted through a general intake form on the division’s website. Hive Automate then categorizes and creates a child project with pre-filled details such as assignees and deadlines.

“When I developed Hofstra’s workflows, I also built automation recipes that would populate the right templates and assign the correct team members based on the type of request,” Joanne says.

Ad hoc projects, like the Gala, are handled slightly differently. Project Manager Armani Harper customizes Hive templates for these large-scale, one-off initiatives.

“For the Gala, I used a cross-functional template and tailored it to that year’s priorities,” Armani explains. “I assigned team members and built out timelines manually, but the template gave me a solid starting point.”

Terry notes that using Hive provided valuable insight for strategic decisions. “When planning the Gala in Hive, we realized we needed to focus more on scholarship fundraising. Having everything visible helped us shift our messaging and strategy.”

Results and Takeaways

For Terry and Armani, success wasn’t just about the tool—it was about having the right system and the right strategy. Hive provided the structure the team needed to be seen as a strategic, efficient, and high-performing division.

Joanne summarizes it best: “You can buy a tool, but unless you pair it with the right approach, it won’t deliver results. With Hive and a smart strategy, Hofstra was able to build something strong from the ground up.”