VolunteerSpot
I wanted to write a short post simply to highlight a piece of volunteerism related software that I think does a lot of things right. In the spirit of MailChimp, BasecampHQ, Freshbooks, Threadless, and other darling websites, it does one thing well: Helps people self-organize their volunteer activities and volunteers. Where this really hits a sweet spot is with the kind of volunteering that I almost never think about. Volunteering that’s so pervasive, real world, and widespread that nobody makes a big deal out of it: PTAs, Girl and Boy Scout troops, school bake sales, church groups. You know, just the fabric of our communities.
VolunteerSpot does a great job with “Web 1.9″ users that would rather print out their schedule and post it to the fridge than try to sync it with their iPhones. Plus, it’s free, which is – for better or worse – the right price point for volunteer management tools. Right now they are advertising-supported in some ways, which can be distracting.
Check out some of the things they’ve been able to do:
- Red Cross DAT Teams save 2 days a month scheduling volunteers for local disaster response (house fires, etc.)
- Some homeless shelters in Oregon were able to expand from 2 days a week to 5 because VolunteerSpot makes it easy to coordinate volunteers.
- Volunteers from Fork it Over in Washington pick up leftover food from school cafeterias and deliver it to community kitchens. They expanded from picking up food at 2 schools to 9 because the software makes it much easier.
They aren’t a client of ours or anything – just something you should know about, use, and support. VolunteerSpot’s fearless founder, Karen Bantuveris, has been kind enough to sit in on HelpAttack’s advisory board and has already contributed a terrific amount of wisdom.
