mashable.com: Getting bogged down with “reply all” emails? Or how about the numerous calendars and event reminders you have through your email, smartphone and Facebook?
Mom Karen Bantuveris was trying to balance her job, PTA meetings and Girl Scouts, but the communication between volunteers was cluttered.
“I saw many people drop out of volunteering, not because they didn’t want to help, but because the communication process was too frustrating,” she tells Mashable.
6 comments:
Speaking as a box office employee and house manager, this would be awesome to have for managing all the ushers who "work some nights but not all", "only every other Tuesday", "but I can't work the next three nights because those will be all-nighters", etc. Maria does a great low-tech job, but this would rock for keeping track (and displaying) what's available to sign up for, what nights are packed, and (holy crap!) emailing reminders automatically the night before. If you added a simple timeclock integration and hours tracker with good output, it would be amazing.
This is pretty sweet! There are so many amazing people who are passionate about running a charitable organization (or some facet of a charitable organization) that have the drive an the resources but don't necessarily have the management skills or the support they need to keep everyone organized and in-the-know. I wonder what degree of flexibility and customization the program has. It seems like the basic features would be useful for any organization, but beyond that it can sometimes be hard getting a standard program to do exactly what your organization needs it to do. Either way, though, this is a great example of how technology can really be used to help us get our everyday work done in a more efficient manner if used correctly.
Organizing volunteers is the worst. Not because of the volunteers, but because you hopefully have so many that you dont know what to do with. Hopefully this will have enough flexibility and will grow to allow individuals in any industry to use it. Its like a doodle poll with automatic volunteer greatness. As shannon points out, this could also help people with skills that they might not have create an amazing event. Maybe Ill try this at least once.
This is a really interesting concept. Being more organized, especially in the volunteer world, is never a bad thing. However, I'm a little skeptical. We already have numerous apps, websites, and programs to schedule our time. We have events on facebook, emails, text messages, google calendar, Mac calendar, and so many productivity/scheduling apps. I do love the idea of making things easier, but will this really make things easier? Or will it just add another thing we have to "check"?
The things that stand out to me about this--that I think make it unique and feasible-- are volunteer tracking and the other stats that would be really useful to the organization.
This seems like a really great tool. I know that when I got involved in the fundraising for showcase at the end of last year, the current seniors told me that the hardest part was keeping track of who was doing what when, and being sure that they remembered what they signed up to do and actually showed up. This seems like it might be the perfect tool to help organize that. With so many people wanting to get involved, VolunteerSpot could definitely help everyone see where we are at and how they can get involved and help. I also REALLY like that it sends out reminder emails... that's always a big help when you have so many people to keep track of.
I'm glad that the issue of bad communication tools has been addressed here. It must be so unfortunate to lose people willing to volunteer their time and effort for a cause just because the means of communication that are used are frustrating. It is so useful and impressive that this tool offers to create forms and also organize projects into websites that can easily lay out tasks and responsibilities. Hopefully this will both motivate people to volunteer more and to also create volunteer projects since the organization of one has been made incredibly easier thanks to this tool.
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