About Habitat for Humanity
Driven by the vision that everyone needs a decent place to live, Habitat for Humanity began in 1976 as a grassroots effort on a community farm in southern Georgia.
Families and individuals in need of a hand-up partner with Habitat for Humanity to build or improve a place they can call home. Habitat homeowners help build their own homes alongside volunteers and pay an affordable mortgage. By donating, volunteering, or advocating for affordable housing, anyone can help families achieve strength, stability, and self-reliance for a better future.
The Challenge
Since adopting Giveffect in 2021, Habitat for Humanity NW Metro Atlanta has consistently utilized the platform to streamline and enhance their fundraising and volunteer management efforts. In 2022, Habitat for Humanity NW Atlanta leveraged Giveffect to tackle a longstanding challenge in their large-scale annual collaboration with the Cobb High School Coalition home build. In the past, using different CRM systems to manage volunteering, this initiative was a logistical and time-consuming challenge. Volunteer hour completion was not where they wanted it to be. Habitat staff, school staff, and students alike found the process of managing sign-ups and day-of-build event check-in to be confusing and difficult. This led to insufficient staff for each build day prior to the event, an inaccurate count of volunteer participants, and paper waivers being signed on-site.
The Solutions
Utilizing Volunteer Campaigns
Using Giveffect, Habitat for Humanity NW Atlanta created volunteer campaigns for each house build. This allowed participants to sign up to volunteer and donate from the same page. This also made donation tracking easy because donations are automatically attributed to the sponsor of each particular build. Right within each campaign webpage, Habitat for Humanity NW Atlanta was able to set jobs and shifts for volunteer groups. Volunteers could also sign up for multiple shifts from one page instead of having to sign up for different shifts from different pages. And the staff could monitor volunteer hour completion in real-time.
Streamlining Volunteer Reservations
Each school needed a unique reservation for every build day, totaling 24 reservations. Habitat for Humanity NW Atlanta facilitated this by emailing each school advisor a link to their reservations through Giveffect’s volunteer reservation system. Initially, advisors had to contact the Habitat for Humanity Community Engagement Manager directly to modify their reservations. Following feedback, Giveffect updated the platform, granting external points of contact the ability to independently create and manage their reservations. This new feature allows school advisors to autonomously adjust their volunteer slots. This reduces the need for ongoing communication with the Community Engagement Manager and enhances efficiency and time management.
Enhancing the Volunteer Mobile Check-in Process
On Build Days, Habitat for Humanity NW Atlanta efficiently manages the check-in and check-out of all volunteers using Giveffect’s Event Buddy app. This system streamlines volunteer tracking. Instead of undergoing a tedious or time-consuming process, staff can quickly access an entire roster of volunteers assigned to that day. With just a few clicks, they can search for a volunteer’s name and check them in, simplifying the process significantly.
Automating Volunteer Completion Hour Reporting
Habitat for Humanity NW Atlanta now uses Giveffect’s automated volunteer reporting, streamlining their process by moving away from manual data handling and calculations in Excel. With Giveffect, the team inputs their specific search criteria into the advanced search feature, and Giveffect immediately shows the totals. For example, by searching for group reservation names with “High School” in the 2022 Cobb Build campaign, the Community Engagement Manager quickly discovered that 157 students had contributed 1,192 hours. This efficiency proved invaluable for the Affiliate Statistical Report for Habitat for Humanity International, streamlining the process and ensuring effortless accuracy.
Results
Incredible results by the numbers:
- 24 Completed Builds
- 188 Volunteer Shifts
- 1,192 Volunteer Hours Completed
- 157 Reservations Confirmed
- 95% of Assigned Hours Completed!
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