Introduction
Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that works to provide affordable housing solutions. Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities, and hope. Their ultimate goal: a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity was founded by a small group of volunteers in 1992. From devoted volunteers to committed staff members, they exist to serve low-income residents of Cedar, Iowa, Johnson, and Washington Counties. After two years of work, they proudly built their first home in 1994.
To date, Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity has supported more than 150 families working to improve their living situations.
Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity International was founded in 1946 by Linda and Millard Fullard with the goal of addressing poverty housing issues around the globe. The concept centered on those in need of adequate shelter working side by side with volunteers to build decent, affordable houses.
The houses are built at no profit. New homeowners’ house payments are combined with no-interest loans provided by supporters and money earned by fundraising to create “The Fund for Humanity,” which is then used to build more homes.
Habitat relies on volunteer labor in order to construct simple and affordable homes with its partner families, as well as to build community and civil society in the areas in which it works. Many corporations, businesses, churches and other houses of worship sponsor houses and provide a large amount of volunteers from their congregations.
“Seeking to put God’s love into action, Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities, and hope.”
Challenge
Founded by a group of volunteers, Iowa Valley’s volunteers are vital to the success of
the organization. Loyal volunteers can devote hundreds of hours to your organization and
make a valuable impact on your cause. That being said, it is important to ensure that
volunteers are treated well and have the tools they need to succeed to help advance their
mission.
Prior to using Giveffect, Iowa Valley used a time-consuming, labor-intensive software platform requiring tons of manual data entry. Volunteers completed applications online but were unable to sign the volunteer waivers. Waivers were signed on-site and tracked in an antiquated, accordion file folder. Hours worked, skills, and interests were tracked in Excel spreadsheets. With volunteers as the lifeblood of their organization, attracting and keeping volunteers was essential. However, when no streamlined program is in place, volunteers are likely to lose motivation and quit.
It was vital for Iowa Valley to modernize its volunteer process and streamline their efforts into an effective program. Beyond modernizing their volunteer management software, Iowa Valley had a wishlist of additional improvements:
Solution
Improving on-boarding experience
Establishing a solid volunteer on-boarding process is key to increasing an organization’s number of volunteer and retention rates. An on-boarding process for volunteers sets the foundation for a fruitful relationship with your organization, making it less likely that they will leave. Communication is fundamental in the on-boarding process. At the start, it was important for Iowa Valley to communicate their mission, programs, what work volunteer help with, and how to track their volunteer duties and hours. As Iowa Valley found, when you explain what volunteers are helping you achieve, they are more inclined to participate.
Founded by a group of volunteers, Iowa Valley’s volunteers are vital to the success of the organization. Loyal volunteers can devote hundreds of hours to your organization and make a valuable impact on your cause. That being said, it is important to ensure that volunteers are treated well and have the tools they need to succeed to help advance their mission.
Because of our email marketing and database integration, Iowa Valley can more effectively communicate with volunteers and build faster connections. Our software provides outreach tools to contact those who’ve volunteered for upcoming events, set regular assignments, set ratings volunteers, and track responses or availability.
Leverage Volunteer Skills, Interests, and Experience
Volunteers bring unique skills, experience, and interests to your organization. Though VolunteerHub was able to capture some skills and interests, Giveffect enhances the collection of data by allowing organizations to customize forms with skills and interests that are most relevant to their organization’s volunteer work. By allowing the organization to input skills and interests options, it also eliminated opportunities for user error and unclean data. Thus, Iowa Valley can pull more specific reports on volunteer skills enabling them to better assign roles and responsibilities.
Enhance User Experience
Using spreadsheets and handwritten calendars can slow productivity and reduce efficiency. With our effective, centralized web-based system, prospective volunteers can self-manage their accounts and relieve the responsibility of maintaining excess paperwork or documents outside of the software. Volunteers can easily track their volunteer activity, sign up for jobs & shifts, and contact staff members. With our automated and centralized volunteer calendar, Iowa Valley can instantly publish volunteer events online.
Our platform acts as an automated volunteer manager, organizing important information into an intuitive user dashboard. The interactive calendar simplifies the registration process for prospective volunteers, as they can easily review upcoming events and access event information, and streamline the management process for staff members. Staff members and volunteers can log in any time and review which events require more volunteers.
Results
Since adopting Giveffect, Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity has seen a significant increase in the number of volunteers. With all of the data in one backend database, Iowa Valley receives a full 360-degree view of their volunteers’ interactions with their organization. It helps organizations stay in touch with their supporters with automated, personalized communication options. As volunteers make an impact, Iowa Valley could better communicate their appreciation and recognition of the volunteers, strengthening the volunteers’ connection to the organization.
By understanding the strengths of each individual, each volunteer is given a relevant task, maximizing their effort and impact on the organization. Furthermore, Iowa Valley volunteers feel more invested working in an area where they can be most valuable.
