Every year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, millions of people around the world come together to give back to the causes they care about by making donations and volunteering their time for Giving Tuesday, a global day of generosity. Giving Tuesday is an engagement opportunity that no organization, institution or community engagement program should miss out on, especially this year.
While COVID-19 has affected nearly everyone’s lives and operations, studies show that your community still wants to make a difference by donating and engaging in virtual volunteer opportunities, and combining those two efforts can have long lasting positive outcomes. This Giving Tuesday, on December 1st, 2020, bring your community together by offering virtual volunteer and donation opportunities, or combine the two by engaging volunteers in peer to peer fundraising or other campaign related activities.
Leverage our Giving Tuesday Toolkit as shown below to turn your Giving Tuesday into a virtual day of generosity that will engage donors and volunteers alike.
Step 1: Create a Giving Tuesday Fundraising Campaign
Creating a fundraising campaign ensures that your community members who want to give back have the opportunity to do so. We recommend setting a goal you think you can hit, enabling peer to peer fundraising, and incorporating a story with examples of impact, including a featured photo or video. If you have volunteer opportunities related to the fundraising campaign, include those on your page so people know they can make a difference in multiple ways.
Peer to peer (P2P) fundraisers are volunteers who will advocate for your cause and ask for donations from their network of friends, family and colleagues through a personal fundraising page connected to your campaign. P2P solicitations are usually more personal and more effective, allowing your organization to reach new donors.
Here are some tips to help you successfully manage P2P fundraisers:
Send messages to your volunteers, event attendees or members directing them to create a campaign through the “Help Fundraise” button on your page. Treat this as another volunteer opportunity and communicate how their help will be essential to accomplish your organization’s goals.
Incentivize them by providing P2P fundraiser prizes as this group did on GivePulse! The leaderboard feature makes it easy to see who your top ranking group and individual P2P fundraisers are.
When thanking donors for their gift, customize your campaign’s thank you message with a link to sign up to be a P2P fundraiser so they can amplify the impact of their donation.
For volunteers who may not want to peer to peer fundraise, you can still include them in your Giving Tuesday campaign by asking them to help with campaign elements like making a video, doing graphic design, writing emails, sharing on social media or helping your organization write thank you cards. Having volunteers contribute their time and skills to fundraising campaigns makes them more likely to be a donor in the future just by coming in contact with your campaign.
To get started, set up a GivePulse volunteer opportunity with different campaign activities as shifts. You can use shift settings to specify how many people you need and timeframes for each activity. You can also set up multi-step volunteer opportunities by using GivePulse’s new Project-Based Events feature.
Other Giving Tuesday Virtual Engagement Opportunities:
Promote Virtual Volunteer Opportunities
Looking to set up a virtual volunteer event for Giving Tuesday separate from a fundraising campaign? Here are some tips for setting your event as virtual and tagging it for COVID-19.
Find a Volunteer Fiscal Sponsor
GivePulse enables companies and organizations to match volunteer hours with dollar amounts. If your organization works with volunteers from a particular company or corporation, this could be a great opportunity for them to make their employee’s volunteer contributions go further. Contact us to learn more.
We know that there is an overlap between volunteers and donors and that your most engaged community members will give back in multiple ways, but it’s up to you to ask. Promoting virtual volunteer experiences and online fundraising opportunities this Giving Tuesday will keep supporters engaged from a distance, give your community the opportunity to contribute in new ways, and offer much needed support for your organization during this challenging time.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all sectors of our lives. Financial strains and an unprecedented transition to newfound forms of virtual and remote volunteering have combined to create a multifaceted burden on nonprofits. For organizations who would like to connect regarding additional resources or best practices for any of these items, please don’t hesitate to reach out to covid@givepulse.com.
In light of these changes, GivePulse chose to partner with GivingTuesdayNow, an initiative that encourages communities to donate time, talent, and treasure to the organizations that need them most. In doing so, we hope to elevate all the great community work that is happening. We know that asking for help right now can be difficult; we believe it is worthwhile to assess whether your organization feels it is appropriate to seek monetary donations at this time in your community. If not, perhaps a donations drive, volunteering campaign, or some other alternative will offer more approachable forms of giving.
Whatever you decide is an appropriate path for your organization to take this #GivingTuesdayNow, we hope that this guide will help you to communicate and plan effectively.
GivingTuesdayNow will take place on May 5, 2020, in addition to the regularly scheduled GivingTuesday on December 1, 2020. Created in response to urgent needs produced by COVID-19, GivingTuesdayNow promotes a concentrated generosity surge to help organizations when they need it most.
On GivingTuesdayNow, individuals can share their resources of any sort, whether that’s by donating money, volunteering virtually to share their time, fulfilling needs for an organization, or sharing a skill to complete a crucial project. In this way, GivingTuesdayNow encourages all communities to give as they are able, no matter what form this giving takes. As with virtual volunteer efforts, GivingTuesdayNow campaigns are strongest if they are built on transparency and connectedness. Below, you will find information about topics including:
How to effectively communicate needs
How to convert volunteers to donors
How to use this opportunity to strengthen connections to your cause and to your organization
We also want to highlight a product enhancement that we hope organizations will benefit from this GivingTuesdayNow: in response to feedback from our network, our team has developed a new in-kind donations functionality, just in time for this day of generosity. Donation Drive events create a space for wishlists and in-kind donations, for everything from food to hand sanitizer to books for children. GivingTuesdayNow is about more than just financial support; it’s about generosity in all of its forms. Donation Drives can help you to request whatever your organization and your clients need most, in addition to (or as an alternative to) financial forms of giving. If you have any questions about Donation Drives, contact our team at donationdrives@givepulse.com.
Communicating needs
In order to effectively drive donors and volunteers to your organization, you will want to find a compelling way to communicate your organization’s needs. Through conversations with our partners and through our own research, we have identified the following aspects as keys to successful communication:
If you are seeking monetary donations, recognize newfound burdens
Language that conveys your understanding of the financial instability of this time will show that you recognize that not everyone will be able to give, while doubling down on showing the need for donations from those who can. In fact, according to Fidelity Charity’s survey of regular givers, 54% of donors said that the amount that they would donate would not change in light of COVID-19 — and 25% said that they would donate more.
Diversify the digital resources you use
At a time when virtual stimuli can be particularly loud, using a variety of digital resources helps to ensure that everyone on your network will learn about your GivingTuesdayNow campaign, no matter their preferred mode of virtual communication. A few ways to diversify digital resources include creating a virtual countdown on both your website and your Instagram stories, sending email calendar invites from GivePulse registration and linking to the calendar event in your newsletter, posting more regularly on every social media platform, sending newsletters to volunteers and donors alike, and making sure to use the hashtag #GivingTuesdayNow to amplify your message.
Convey urgency through transparent communication of needs
Now is the time to be honest and explicit about your organization’s needs. Authenticity and transparency are more critical than ever to indicate how COVID-19 has altered your organization, and how investments of time, talent, and treasure now will strengthen your programs moving forward. Let folks know about loss of revenue, about depleted funds, about staff reductions and center closures. This vulnerability will underscore your understanding that these times are unprecedented, and will also authentically portray why GivingTuesdayNow is of the utmost importance.
Show the impact of donations
Explain how a donation will help your organization, in as much detail as possible.Tell the story of how funds and goods are used. Ask volunteers to send in reflections on how they have seen their programs impact the community, and share these stories through your social media and through newsletters. If you can, put a name and face to your donation requests. 65% of donors say that they would donate more if they knew the impact of their donations — the more transparent you are, the more volunteers and donors will choose to give if they can.
Set and track specific goals
Give donors something tangible to contribute toward. Set a specific target goal, and if possible, indicate why that target goal is pertinent. For example, if a certain amount of money allows your organization to feed a family, make your dollar goal correspond to the number of families fed. If you are running a donation drive, the same principle applies. Maybe you want to deliver one new book to every student your organization works with, and your organization works with 600 students. Set the target goal at 600 books and underscore that this means every student your organization works with will receive a new book. Donors can see that their donation corresponds directly to an individual student, and you can send regular updates throughout the day as you get closer and closer to your goal.
Converting volunteers to donors
This chart shows responses to our Program Assessment Survey question asking respondents whether they would consider using this time to convert volunteers to donors. 67% said yes; 33% said maybe, but unsure how.
From our Program Assessment Survey, we learned that about one out of every three organizations would consider using this time to convert volunteers to donors, but aren’t sure how to do so. While some programs might be concerned about asking those who already donate their time to shift this to a financial donation, statistics suggest that this is in fact a very common transition: according to data from the International AFP Conference, the average volunteer is four times as likely to donate as someone who doesn’t volunteer — and they typically give ten times as much! To encourage this transition, we suggest the following:
Relate donations to volunteering time shared
Whether or not your volunteers have been able to engage virtually with your organization, you can emphasize donating as analogous to their usual time shared. Indicate how donations directly impact their usual volunteer efforts. How much does it cost for supplies that your volunteers typically use? For the space that they work in? For the staff who train and work with them? Use your volunteers’ own experiences to display the value of their donations.
Encourage reflection and sharing of stories
Go even further in using volunteer experiences to display the value of donations: use the days leading up to your GivingTuesdayNow campaign to ask volunteers to share stories and anecdotes about their volunteer experiences. This will both provide content that you can share to your volunteer and donor networks in requests for their assistance on GivingTuesdayNow, and encourage your volunteers to reflect on the impact that the organization has had on their lives. Drawing their attention simultaneously to your donation campaign and to the positive experiences they have had will align the two, a link that may lead to more giving.
Emphasize connection
GivingTuesdayNow offers an opportunity for volunteers who might normally get to connect in-person through trainings, celebrations, and engagement to combat isolation. Ask them to engage in peer-to-peer fundraisingefforts and invite them to a celebratory event at the end of the day — see our section on thanking donors and staying connected for more ideas!
Overall, your volunteers are individuals who care deeply about your organization and their community. Even if they do not typically donate, you can be confident that they will do what they can for your organization. Once you show how donating will impact the cause they care about, it’s more than likely you will find that these volunteers are excited to donate if able in these times.
Setting up donations and donation drives
For any donors, whether they are new or returning, it is important to make the donation process clear and easy. How you decide to set up your donation and donation drive campaigns will impact whether and how much people donate. Taking into account how donors are driven to your page, where funds are placed, and how long your campaign will extend can make all the difference. Here are some tips for how to do so:
Use a general fund
Your funding needs during the COVID-19 crisis will most likely be unpredictable, so fundraising for a general or emergency fund where you can easily access and use donations will be essential. You don’t want your funds to be locked into a certain fund as your needs continue to change over the upcoming weeks.
Send automatic reminders
Use a calendar invite to both remind donors of GivingTuesdayNow and to provide a link through which they can easily donate. For example, if your organization plans to set up a donate button on your GivePulse page, you can link to that page on the calendar invite. You can also create a fundraising campaign or donation drive event, which will automatically send reminders to registrants! Decide how often you want to remind your network of the upcoming event — perhaps three separate reminders, scheduled for one week, three days, and one day before?
Keep donors updated
Once your donors get to the donations page, you’ll want to have a way to show the target goal and how close you are. GivePulse can help to keep donors informed, whether through the landing page for the fundraising campaign as shown in the image below or through email, SNS, SMS, or another communication method (reach out to support@givepulse.com for more information about these options). Similarly, share regular updates throughout the day on your social media! If donors see that you are close to the target this may encourage them to bump their donation to reach the goal; for those who haven’t donated yet, seeing reminders throughout the day on social media will encourage them to join in the effort.
GivePulse can help to keep new and returning donors up to date with its automatic display of the dollars raised versus the goal.
Extend your campaign
Consider making this a longer campaign. GivingTuesdayNow offers an excellent focal point, but it certainly does not mean that your fundraising campaign needs to be limited to only May 5! You can make GivingTuesdayNow the end or start date of a longer campaign, framing it as a kickoff for or celebratory end to a successful giving campaign.
Thanking donors and staying connected
Both during and after your campaign, you have a perfect opportunity to strengthen connections to your organization and cause. There are a variety of ways that you can show your appreciation for donors:
Send a thank you letter
This is a classic for a reason. Receiving a physical reminder of their donation and an acknowledgement of the difference it makes shows a donor that their giving matters, and makes them feel personally connected to your organization. This physical reminder can be digital — an email, for example — or physical. No matter what the format, a tangible indication of your gratitude will connect the donors to your organization.
Host a virtual thank-a-thon
Meeting virtually can help donors and volunteers to connect with one another, and also to deepen their connection to the organization. Create a structured virtual event where you show the impact of donors’ efforts and thank the top donors individually. To make it easy for everyone to find and access your event, you can create a virtual event on GivePulse and add a conferencing URL to help everyone access the thank-a-thon at the click of a button. Give everyone the opportunity to applaud the end results. Extend this into a happy hour and encourage casual conversation. Get to know your donors and volunteers as individuals, and learn more about why they care so much about your organization.
Use a leaderboard and donor wall
Show donors that you appreciate their efforts by highlighting a virtual donor wall! GivePulse users are able to activate a leaderboard and be updated concerning recent giving activity for any fundraising campaign. Donors can be updated on the campaign and are able to share this with friends and family to drive further donations.
GivePulse fundraising campaigns automatically generate a Campaign Leaderboard and Activity.
Use volunteers for stewardship efforts
Message your volunteers asking them to send thank-you videos to donors and to let them know how their funds will impact volunteers. This will show exactly what donors’ funds are going toward, and might encourage them to become long-term donors. If your volunteers have already recorded impacts on GivePulse, you can look through their shared testimonials and reflections to collectively tell the stories and impact they make to the organization!
Stay in touch
Send out follow-ups to show the impact of donations; this will help to turn one-time donors into lifelong proponents of your cause! Add your donors and volunteers to a listserv and regularly update them on how funds are being used. When possible, include pictures, as well as specific stories and anecdotes.
We hope that this guide helps to give some starting points for this GivingTuesdayNow. Remember to post your efforts with the hashtag #GivingTuesdayNow on social media, and to tag us if you are using our platform! Join us at our Open Office Hours this Friday May 1st at 1pm CT or reach out to support@givepulse.com for help with setting up donations, fundraising campaigns, and donation drives for your organization. Contact our COVID-19 taskforce at covid@givepulse.com if you’d like to brainstorm and discuss how your organization can best shift to virtual opportunities to connect with volunteers at this time.
GivePulse has had an incredibly exciting 2019! Between the product enhancements and business operation improvements, we’ve been investing further to ensure our platform performs as efficiently and effectively as possible to empower social good. We are so grateful to all of our clients and to all of the amazing volunteers and organizations whose work is making an impact in their communities! Read on to learn more about what we have accomplished this year.
Product Updates
GivePulse continues to grow and improve constantly. Our fantastic team of engineers, in addition to working around the clock to ensure that any bugs are quickly fixed, have heard suggestions from clients, and have used these, along with their own ideas, to make GivePulse more intuitive and efficient. Early in the year, we combined the Sign-In app with the GivePulse app to make our mobile functions more extensive. We then made additional mobile app improvements on our administrative kiosk mode to collect additional custom fields, and added the abilities to verify impacts on the go and the usage of a QR Code for clock-in/out. If you haven’t yet, download the GivePulse app on iOS or Android so you can record and verify hours in addition to our mobile web responsive experience! In the spring and summer, we improved our SMS capabilities and calendar functionalities, particularly with the addition of a deeper integration with popular calendar applications like Google Calendar (email support@givepulse.com to learn more or to activate these additional functionalities!). Later in the year, we made significant improvement to our internships functionality to help scale placements for institutions. Beyond these, we have continued to make all aspects of our site more customizable (for example, we have added the ability to add images and tables to email templates, the ability to customize confirmation emails for each specific event, and an increase to the amount of recurrences allowed in a recurring event), among the many, many other changes we have had the chance to make. These are just the tip of the iceberg — for more updates, check out the Recent Updates section of our support portal, attend our product meetings, join our listserv by creating an account, or schedule a time to chat with us!
Conference Updates
This year saw us attending over 20 different conferences, including IARSCLE, Gulf South Summit, The Impact Conference, Campus Labs Connect, and much much more. Some key takeaways from our time at these conferences includes the importance of hyperlocal engagement, the need for deep institutional commitment in order to sustain change, and the need to assess and tell stories about the work being done. We use what we learn at these conferences to aim enhancements and changes to GivePulse toward making the most effective and sustainable change, so we are always excited to learn from these fantastic opportunities!
Content Updates
We were thrilled to get the chance to highlight the work of many of our incredible partners this year on our blog. This year, our spotlights focused on how GivePulse could be used at universities large and small, on how GivePulse is used to help engage communities to fight food waste and education inequity, and on amazing volunteers engaging with GivePulse. We also looked back on our team’s adventures and offered ideas for how to recruit volunteers and celebrate important holidays in community-oriented and engaging ways. We are excited to continue to spotlight our fantastic partners next year — we already have some great pieces in the works for you!
Team Updates
This year, we welcomed new engineers and business teammatesto our Austin office, and have benefited from their insight and enthusiasm already. We can’t wait to see what is in store for this team next year! We certainly anticipate more eating and more bonding — and perhaps we will welcome some more folks to join us in these adventures next year. Stay tuned!
With 2020 coming up, GivePulse is entering a new decade for the first time since its founding in 2012. Between 2012 and now, we have grown extraordinarily, and that is entirely due to the amazing efforts of folks who use our platform for the greater good. Let us know what you would like to see from 2020, and we can’t wait to connect with you in the new year!
With the end of the year (and the decade!) fast approaching, our team took a few days to rest, look back at our growth this year, and bond as a team. We gathered in beautiful Marble Falls, Texas, just over an hour outside of our home base of Austin.
Although the week leading up to the retreat was chilly and grey, our holiday retreat was filled with sunshine and warmth, both from the people and the weather. Here’s a glance at our weekend, and some takeaways for companies hoping to encourage a productive and tight-knit team:
Rest Up
Clear air, rocking chairs, hammocks and rivers — between all of these elements, we were able to enjoy a truly restful few days. Our team took time to sit and talk on the comfortable porches, to watch beautiful sunsets, to play a game or two of soccer (as well as of Mafia), and to sing songs by a bonfire. All of these moments, while seemingly the most simple, were among the most important for our team. They drew us closer together, encouraging comfort and vulnerability that our team can call upon in the office whenever we have any questions, need help, or are excited to share good news.
Takeaway: It’s the quietest moments that can make all the difference in a busy office environment. Giving your team unstructured time helps them to forge the connections that will bring your company together in times of both stress and joy.
Eat Up
Whenever we gather together, we enjoy preparing and eating big meals (see, for example, our recent Worksgiving)! When we arrived at Marble Falls on Friday afternoon, we immediately set about preparing dinner — and snacking in the meantime. Every day, our team worked together to prepare, cook, and clean, always looking for ways that we could help, checking in with one another to plan an efficient and delicious process. And at night, we sat down for family dinners together, laughing over wine and food, sharing stories and hopes in our cozy cabin. Cooking highlight: five hours spent making delicious mutton and chicken karahi! All agreed that the end result was well worth the time.
Takeaway:Food brings us together, and cooking as a group teaches us to delegate tasks and consider ways to nurture one another. These are skills that are vitally important both in and out of the office, and will help your team to work together efficiently while never losing track of the people that your work nurtures at the end of the day.
Team Up
On Saturday, we spent the day at Candelight Ranch, a nonprofit offering outdoor opportunities to special needs and at-risk children. Here, the wonderful volunteers guided us through team building exercises that solidified our belief that there’s nothing the GivePulse team can’t do. Some highlights from this day include resourcefulness on the island-hopping activity, where a lost wooden plank couldn’t dampen the good mood as we hopped from platform to platform; support as we helped one another over a sheer wooden wall, helping our team to learn that we were capable of more than we even believed; and facing fears through ziplining and the Canyon Crawl, a tightrope walk across the canyon! We also, of course, enjoyed befriending some four-legged friends through horse groundwork.
Takeaway: Our team worked closely together in a setting that pushed us all outside of our comfort zone — and in doing so, we learned the power of positivity, listening, problem-solving together, and pushing ourselves past our perceived limits. These are all critical skills to a productive, vibrant, and efficient work environment!
Gear Up
This retreat gave us the opportunity to gear up for next year. We did so by looking back at some of the highlights from this year (learning and sharing more about our rockstar volunteers, nonprofits, universities, and corporations; improving both our mobile and web presences, particularly through advances to our app, our corporate matching platforms, and our internship capabilities; growing our team of incredible engineers and success managers), and used this period of reflection to think about what comes next. We are excited to continue growing our team of incredible, community-motivated individuals, and to continue working toward our mission of transforming everyone into engaged citizens.
Takeaway: At the end of the year, make sure to reflect over the many advances you have made, and to share your appreciation for the growth your team has enabled. Sharing this love and gratitude will give everyone the boost they need to engage whole-heartedly in the New Year, helping you to meet your 2020 goals.
With a team like this, we know we can’t go wrong. For any office, time spent relaxing together is crucial to maintaining individual mental health and to strengthening the company. In the end, this time spent resting together is indicative of what is most important to GivePulse — people.
We hope that you have the chance to rest this holiday season and to spend time with the people you love most. Keep an eye out for an upcoming product summary of GivePulse in 2019, and we look forward to sharing more stories in the New Year!
We are excited to introduce you all to our new mobile downloadable iOS and Android app. The GivePulse Mobile App 2.0 comes packed with additional capabilities to allow a seamless search and discovery process for events and groups, an easier tracking experience for community engagement, and a consolidated inboxing system to organize all communication on the go!
These screenshots of our mobile app include: the list/map view, details view, and dashboard view.
We designed and developed this GivePulse iOS/Android app for Volunteers, Members and Administrators (who can use its inboxing feature to communicate with their volunteers). The mobile app is supported to work on iOS and Android devices (phones and tablets). On this post, we will focus our energy sharing key areas we think is important for all users!
Fun Fact: We currently have 2 downloadable apps in both the iTunes and Google Play store. One is for individuals (volunteers or members of organizations to browse and track their engagement, and we recommend admins to use it for communication). This is the focus of the blog post. The other one, called GivePulse Sign-In (is meant specifically for admins, checkin attendants, or site leads to sign-in individuals on the go or in kiosk-mode so volunteers can walk up to sign-in or even clock in/out).
Login
When using the new GivePulse Mobile App 2.0, users will have a few options to login or authenticate as shown below:
Register if you don’t have an account or use existing authentication methods.
Over the course of the past year, this is by-far the biggest improvement to our mobile downloadable app. As shown on the left, we now include multiple authentication options (namely Single Sign On) to support the diverse set of users GivePulse supports. With these abilities, we are able to ensure our enterprise clients can encourage their communities to log in with existing credentials. This will protect them from duplication of data, accounts and a number of different security factors. We believe having these options will provide a single access point for all users to login seamlessly.
Fun Fact: You can login to any of the options available (Email, Facebook, Google and SSO). If there are multiple accounts created, these accounts can be merged together so all authentication methods end up on the same account/profile. In the case you want to register without using the existing authentication methods, you can press the “Register” option at the top. This workflow will drop you into a few steps to complete.
Navigation
When logged in successfully, you will be able to see the following at the bottom navigation (these options appear at the top for android):
As shown above, these are what we believe are the most important menu options to help navigate in the app. You can tap on any of the following –
Search: Allows the end user to browse and search for regional events and groups to register or become a member of
Dashboard: Pulls together a list of groups you are a member of, upcoming events registered to, previously attended events, etc., This can be used as a quick way to track and confirm your engagement
Add Impact: Allows individuals to track their engagement. If their administrator decides to ask additional questions or specific details of the activity, these will be populated too
Inbox: Allows individuals to communicate back and forth within the app. People who receive messages will get push notifications every single time there is a new message
Profile: Pulls together a list of details to summarize the individual’s engagement in the community
Search & Browse
On the “search” experience, you will immediately access a map/list view of local events and groups in your region.
Fun Fact: If you decide you want to search a larger radius, you can “pinch” the screen so that it will zoom in or out. Pinching will also increase the search radius too! Note, we haven’t launched in all the cities yet, but we do anticipate to do so with your help!
You can zoom in and out on the map and click on the pins to see more details of the events or groups.
You can drag and drop the list view which is overlaid on the map and interact with both views together.
The map and list views are interactive, meaning users can drag up and down the list view and see a whole map view in the background. Users can also choose to browse through the normal list view without the map. Whenever there is a specific event or group of interest, the user can tap more to see the details. A modal will be displayed to show some details of the event.
Dashboard
Screenshot of how it looks viewing groups from the dasbboard.
In the case, the user has existing memberships or groups they are a interested in, they can navigate to the “dashboard” shown on the right.
The dashboard helps aggregate together the groups and events the individual is associated with. This will make it easier for the user to quickly access these on the go.
In many instances, an individual primarily will use the app to register to an event, join a group or discover new experiences. Beyond this, the secondary actions include tracking one’s engagement and interacting with those on the platform to organize the logistics of the events.
Add Impact
As shown below, you are able to search and select organizations to track your engagement (be it service hours or other outputs):
Shows a list of potentially required areas sections, like Group, Event, Date and the outputs that help tell the story.
This workflow will continue to evolve as we learn more about its usage. With this in mind, we anticipate adding new enhancements in upcoming versions to streamline the tracking process.
Now moving forward, individuals can leverage the mobile app to track their engagement on the go. Since we encourage accurate data tracking, there is a workflow established which requires users to fill in the basic information: e.g., the group has to exist, an event is optionally associated (and dependent on the group admin’s setting), and the date and outputs must be inputted to go to the next screen.
Fun Fact: There are potentially additional questions the admin can add into the workflow, like adding qualitative custom fields. For example, when administrators want to add reflection questions or a scale to determine user feelings or sentiment, custom fields can be applied to the workflow too.
Inbox
Inbox: Pulls all the communication you are having within the app so simplify messaging on the go.
We conclude this post by introducing you to the Inbox! The mobile downloadable app now has an inbox that can organize all your conversations on the go.
For example, if you were a volunteer who reached out to the organizer and wanted more details on the event, you can now do this within the app. Or, if you were an admin, responding back to volunteer questions, or doing message blasts with all your constituents, you can now do so again on the mobile app!
The inbox benefits individual volunteers and the administrators. With this in mind, we recommend all GivePulse users to download the app to manage conversations to improve response rates.
Fun Fact: If you receive a message, you will be notified by a Push Notification…way better than an email and it is free from SMS charges!
We believe the inbox will be a great foundation to let all users respond back in a efficient manner.
Generic splash screen which we will change from time to time
And there you go, that’s a skinny! From the search experience to the inbox experience, we have rewritten our existing app with a 2.0 release. There is still waaaaayyy more to come and we are excited to give you a glimpse of version 2.0. Hopefully we have also given you a few hints towards what may be coming soon on our roadmap! For those who want to be a part of the roadmap, please contact our product team at product@givepulse.com
Remember, there are 2 apps we support: 1) predominantly for volunteers, which this blog describes, and 2) another focused on allowing admins and event managers to track who signed in or as a way to expose a kiosk mode to allow people to “clock in and out”.
We continue our goals to innovate in this space. We believe with these new additions, we are one step closer to help our partners understand their impact in the community!
And… if the above was too long to read…
TL;DR
Below are a few of the benefits to using the iOS or Android downloadable app.
Volunteer, Member, Participant, Registrant
Login (Gmail, Facebook, email or even Single Sign On – your institution or business’s internal authentication/sign in method)
Discover, browser and search events and groups to join
Register or cancel registration of events
Answer custom fields or questions requested by admins
Review profile and manage your Dashboard of events and memberships
Manage events you are registered to (Dashboard)
Oversee your memberships (Dashboard)
Communicate and message people (Inbox)
Contact the organizer, planner or admin
Add impact (service hours & reflection) to any group or event
Austin, TX, March 4, 2018 – We are excited to announce a new collaboration with Campus Labs®, a leader in helping students connect with and manage co-curricular engagement opportunities, through an enriching integration with the community engagement functionality in GivePulse®.
Established in 2001, Campus Labs delivers an integrated platform that provides an end-to-end solution for setting strategic goals, collecting evidence, and reporting actionable insights. Today, 17 years after its founding, over 1,300 higher education institutions utilize the Campus Labs platform to manage their mission-critical information. Their Campus Labs Engage solution allows campus administrators to connect students to meaningful and guided opportunities, manage and track their involvement, and showcase the institution’s impact on the student experience.
Ryan O’Connell, Campus Labs Senior Product Manager for Student Engagement, stated “the team at GivePulse is very talented” and that “our Engage Member Campuses are going to love their expertise in service-learning and their fresh take on community service management.”
This new GivePulse integration will enable Campus Labs Engage Member Campuses to take advantage of the thoughtful and vast community service promotion, management, and tracking tools within the GivePulse technology; while serving as a valuable resource for student engagement exploration and documentation in Engage. The amazing Campus Labs team will collaborate with GivePulse to bridge together and strengthen a more connected student engagement experience.
“GivePulse is excited to collaborate with Campus Labs to streamline community engagement for students,” said George Luc, GivePulse’s Chief Civic Evangelist and Cofounder. “Together we will enable community organizations to partner with higher-ed institutions on curricular and co-curricular service activities, research, and projects advancing social good!”
To learn more or attend the April 17th webinar, you can go here: https://www.campuslabs.com/resources/upcoming-webinars/enriching-service-management-a-preview-of-our-integration-with-givepulse/
