Background

Rocky Mountain Development Council, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that strives to improve quality of life and promote self-sufficiency for individuals and families. They do this by offering programs addressing community needs including energy assistance, food and nutrition, senior volunteer opportunities, housing and community development, senior information services, Rocky Mountain Head Start, and Rocky Mountain Preschool Center. In order to keep these programs running RMDC relies on the help of community volunteers.  Before the pandemic volunteers had been managed through a spreadsheet and file cabinet. This made it difficult to find documents as they were needed. It also was hard for multiple people to access and correctly use and maintain the volunteer data.

Problem:

When Covid started there was suddenly a huge influx of people wanting to volunteer. With 5+ people applying per week to become volunteers the time demand setting up volunteers became too great. There was also the need for volunteers to be able to sign up for opportunities on their own. The previous system relied on an email from any potential volunteer with available opportunities. 

There was also a growing need for more service to be provided to clients who were needing to isolate. Adding and retaining volunteers was a top priority to keep new programs running. All of these challenges led Maria Murphy, RMDC Volunteer Coordinator to seek out a volunteer management solution that would solve these growing issues.

Benefits:

Once Helper Helper had been decided upon by the RMDC staff it was time to set up their account to directly meet the need of their changing volunteer program. Based on the problems that they were facing, some of the most important features that Helper Helper needed to deploy in their account were setting up the following features.  

Conclusion:

Adopting Helper Helper to manage volunteer registration and events has allowed RMDC to simplify their volunteer management, allowing them to expand their volunteer base. This has allowed for programming to continue throughout the pandemic. Opening up opportunities for more people to get involved in the organization.