Campus Lead Guide
This guide explains the Campus Activation Phase from your side: what you do in MyCampus, how each action works, and why the League built it that way. It is short enough to read before the announcement.
Watch it first. Four minutes, narrated, on the real screens.
Read the transcript
- MyCampus, in five minutes. Welcome to MyCampus, the campus lead portal of the Ohio Founders League. Your job is to get the League in the door on your campus: make sure every strong student venture is registered, verified, and considered for nomination. The Campus Activation Phase runs from October first to January fifteenth, when Season One League begins for the full field. Nominations for the Regional Championships are due February twenty sixth.
- The dashboard. This is your dashboard. It opens with the one line that matters: when nominations close and how many you have against the minimum of ten. Your next move lists what needs you, starting with any venture marked Needs review. The three cards show ventures registered, nominations against the ten to fifteen rule, and campus points, the sum of your ventures' Traction Scores. Every underlined term has a plain-language tooltip, and How this works opens a panel that explains the screen.
- Registering a venture on a founder's behalf. Click Add a venture and you complete the same five step registration a founder would: the venture, discovery, the stage and profile the answers support, the challenges already done, and the scorecard. You enter the founder's name and email. When you finish, the founder receives a verification link. The venture is not scored, not on any leaderboard, and not in the Scout market until they review every step and accept.
- Ventures that register themselves. Students can also register directly and pick your university. They appear as New, with an alert card. Open it and you have the whole workflow. Reach out sends a templated message from the platform, logs a note, sets a follow-up date, and moves the venture to Contacted. Review opens the full profile, and you set Watching with a follow-up date, or Not nominating with a reason on file. Nominate sends it to the Selection Committee. The status is yours to set, and it never touches the venture's score.
- Ventures and Nominations. The Ventures page shows every venture from your university with its founder, stage, Traction Score, and one of three statuses: Needs review, Registered, or Nominated. Each row has the next action: Review, Send intro, or View. The Nominations page tracks your count against the ten to fifteen rule with the days to the February deadline, lists every nominated venture with a Remove button, and lets you tick candidates below and submit them together.
- Scores are not yours. One rule to remember. Scores are not yours to change. Founders report weekly, and League officials verify everything at Stage Final Challenge reviews, in the League Office review queue shown here. The only way a score goes down is an official audit, and when that happens to one of your ventures, you, the founder, and every Scout holding it are notified, with the reason public on the profile.
- Scouts and standings. Anyone at your university can register as a Scout and pick up to five ventures for their portfolio. No money is involved. The Scouts page shows who from your campus is playing, how many slots they have filled, their points, and their league rank. Scouts are ten percent of League Scoring at live events, based on how many portfolios a venture is in, so a campus that turns out Scouts carries its founders onto the stage.
- Your first week. Your first week. Sign in and check your details. Register the ventures you already know well, and chase the founders to verify. Reach out to every New venture within a week of it appearing. Then review, decide, and nominate ten to fifteen for the Regional Championships by February twenty sixth. Ten campuses, one league, one leaderboard. Thank you for leading yours.
Your role, and why the record matters
Get every strong student venture on your campus registered and reporting during the Campus Activation Phase, October 1, 2026 to January 15, 2027, then nominate for the Regional Championships by February 26.
The League needs one thing from each founding university that nobody else can provide: knowledge of who is actually building on that campus. The best student ventures are often not in any entrepreneurship program. They are in a dorm, a lab, or a group chat. The campus lead is the person who knows, or can find out.
The Campus Activation Phase has no cutoff and no selection: every registered venture enters league play on January 15, 2027. What the phase decides is how long a record each venture has by then. The playbook recommends 10 to 15 nominations per campus for the Regional Championships by February 26, so the Selection Committee sees real choice from every school when it picks 12 per region.
Your standing among the ten founding universities is your campus points: the sum of your verified ventures' Traction Scores. Every stage a venture clears is credited in full, and a venture placed above Stage 0 at registration starts with the stages below it credited, so a campus that registers real businesses and gets them verified scores for what those businesses have already built. It rises when your founders build. That is the only way it rises.
- 1Sign in to MyCampus and check your details.
- 2List the ventures you already know. Find the ones you do not.
- 3Register, chase verification, reach out, review. Then nominate ten to fifteen for the Regional Championships by February 26.
| DATE | WHAT HAPPENS |
|---|---|
| September 29, 2026 | Public announcement |
| October 1, 2026 | Campus Activation Phase begins (through Jan 15) (Pre-season. Campuses activate and ventures register. No cutoff, no selection.) |
| January 15, 2027 | SEASON ONE LEAGUE BEGINS (League play opens to the full field. Weekly reporting required from this date for any venture pursuing the State Championship.) |
| February 26, 2027 | Regional nomination deadline (12 ventures selected per region, 36 in all) |
| March 9, 2027 | Cincinnati Regional Championship (South Ohio) (12 ventures, 5 judges) |
| March 10, 2027 | Columbus Regional Championship (Central Ohio) |
| March 11, 2027 | Cleveland Regional Championship (North Ohio) |
| March 14, 2027 | Selection Sunday (The ten finalists named) |
| May 5, 2027 | Blackout |
| May 19, 2027 | STATE CHAMPIONSHIP (The ten finalists compete. State Champion crowned, $500,000 awarded) |
Two ways in, and why the founder must verify
Students register themselves and appear as New. Or you register a venture on a founder's behalf and they verify it.
Both paths exist because both are real. Some founders will hear about the League before you reach them and register directly. Others you already know well and can enter yourself, which saves them the work and gets your campus moving before the announcement.
The verification step is not bureaucracy. A venture you register carries claims about stage, challenges done, and revenue, and the stage it is placed at comes with starting credit for every stage below it, so those claims will be verified by an official at the founder's first Stage Final Challenge review. So the founder has to own them first. Until they open the verification link, review every step, adjust anything wrong, and accept, the venture is not scored, not on any leaderboard, and not in the Scout market. No founder is ever scored on a claim they did not make.
- 1Self-registered: the venture appears on your Ventures page marked Needs review, and as your next move on the dashboard. Reach out first. They may not know you exist.
- 2Add a venture: complete the same five steps a founder would, with the founder's name and email. They get a verification link by email and a notification in the platform. The venture shows Awaiting founder verification until they accept.
- 3Chase acceptance within a few days. Nothing counts until they do.
| STATUS | MEANING |
|---|---|
| Awaiting founder verification | Registered by the campus. Not scored or listed until the founder verifies and accepts. |
| Verified | Founder verified and accepted the profile. They own it from here. |
| Declined by founder | Founder said this profile is not theirs or declined to participate. |
The outreach workflow, and why every step leaves a note
New, Contacted, Watching or Not nominating, Nominated. Each move is a real action with a record.
A nomination window across ten campuses only works if every campus can show its work. So Reach out is not a mailto link. It sends a templated message from the platform, records a note on the venture, and sets a follow-up date, and the status moves to Contacted. Follow-ups due and founder replies come back to your dashboard, so nothing depends on memory.
Review opens the whole venture: stage, profile, challenges, weekly reports, Scout activity. From there you set Watching with a date, or Not nominating with a reason. The reason is required because the League Office reads it when a founder asks why. A campus that can explain its decisions is a campus founders trust.
The status is yours to set and it never touches the venture's score. Scores come from what founders report and what officials verify. Keeping those two things separate is what makes both of them credible.
- 1Reach out: pick a template (introduction, nomination invitation, request for information), edit it, send. Follow-up date set.
- 2Review: read the profile. Set Watching with a date, or Not nominating with a reason.
- 3Nominate: from the alert card, from the venture page, or select several in the registry and nominate together.
- 4Ventures you registered yourself are nominated when the founder verifies, since you already vouched for them.
| STATUS | MEANING |
|---|---|
| New | Self-registered, not yet reviewed by the campus. |
| Contacted | Outreach sent; waiting on the founder. |
| Watching | Reviewed; revisit on the follow-up date. |
| Not nominating | Reviewed; campus decided not to nominate, with a reason on file. |
| Nominated | Submitted to the Selection Committee. |
Nominations, and what the Selection Committee sees
Nominate 10 to 15 for the Regional Championships by February 26. The committee selects 12 per region, 36 in all.
The committee does not see your opinion of a venture. It sees the venture's record: stage and how it was earned, challenges done, weekly reports, verified Stage Final Challenges, and Scout backing. That is why the most useful thing you can do for a venture you believe in is get it registered early and reporting every week. A nominated venture with weeks of reports beats a nominated venture with a good story.
Ten to fifteen is the recommendation because fewer than ten leaves the committee guessing about your campus and more than fifteen dilutes the signal. The dashboard flags you either side of the range.
- 1Open Nominations to see the count against the 10 to 15 rule, the deadline, and every nominated venture.
- 2Nominate from a venture's page, or tick candidates at the bottom of Nominations and submit them together.
- 3Remove a nomination any time before the deadline.
- 4Tell nominated founders to keep reporting. The record is what advances them.
Standings, Scouts, audits, and reporting to leadership
One set of numbers for everyone, Scouts from your campus, alerts when an audit touches a venture, and a CSV for leadership.
There is one leaderboard. Founders, campus leads, Scouts, and officials all see the same numbers, and the University tab ranks all ten founding universities on campus points. When your standing moves, you and your founders see it move for the same reason.
Scouts are the way a campus turns out for its founders. Anyone at your university can register as a Scout and pick up to 5 ventures for their portfolio. No money is involved at any point, so there is no fundraising or compliance question for your campus. Scouts are 10 percent of League Scoring at live events, based on how many portfolios a venture is in, so a campus that turns out Scouts carries its founders onto the stage. The Scouts page shows who from your campus is playing, their points, and their league rank.
When an official audits one of your ventures at a Stage Final Challenge review and points come off, you are notified along with the founder and every Scout holding it, and the reason is public on the profile. Nothing is required of you, but founders often call their campus lead first. Point them to their evidence and to the Challenges page, where the audit is explained.
- 1Leaderboard: your ventures across cohorts, and the University tab. Click any university to see its ventures.
- 2Scouts: recruit student organizations, faculty, and alumni. The Scouts page shows every Scout from your campus.
- 3Export CSV from the Ventures page for your season report to leadership, and again after the Regional fields are set to show who made the 36.
