Background:

More and more organizations and companies are looking to host “Company Volunteer Days” or “Days of Service”. These events / days can be a great way to make a positive impact. Sometimes companies will dedicate one day to support one organization, other companies spread across the country or globe will volunteer with different organizations in their region. Ultimately the goal is to get as many people involved as possible while working alongside fellow community members on a project.  For the last three years, ISACA members, staff, their family and friends join together on the first Saturday in October to improve the world around them. The ISACA CommunITy Day was born out of their 50th anniversary celebration as a way to recognize their association’s global membership and how when they all work together they can change the world. They have 225 chapters around the world with various needs and causes in each local community. They were interested in not only impacting their professional community of digital trust experts but also expanding to influencing the communities in which our members live through charitable work.  This Community Day is an opportunity for everyone to come together on one day and act locally with a global impact. Activities range from park clean ups, organizing cause-based advocacy or fundraising walks, taking children from an orphanage shopping or bowling, donating food or supplies to homeless shelters, visiting hospital patients, offering digital security tutorials for the elderly, and so much more.

Problem:

Prior to executing their first Community Day – Megan and Melissa with ISACA set out to find a solution that could help them accomplish their goals. They knew that organizing a community day would require lots of planning, organization, recruitment and communication. They also knew that one sure way to turn people away and have less volunteers is confusion and chaos. So one of the biggest challenges of this day is how you’re going to manage all the sign ups, make sure people are in the know, and seamlessly collect all the data so you can share your impact without spending hours and hours of time.

Solution:

Find a volunteer management solution that fits your goals. When ISACA was looking for a solution they had a couple features in mind that they thought would make their Community Day seamless. 

• Data Collection
• Reporting
• Event Sign Up
• Team Groupings
• Team Leaders/Admins
• Multiple Time zones
• Photo Uploads
• Waivers
• Emails, App Notification and Text Communication
• Branded iOS and Android Apps
• Calendar Listing
• Survey/Feedback

Fortunately Helper Helper was perfectly set up to manage their community day with over 225 chapters across the entire globe. Megan and Melissa wanted to be able to send their volunteers / employees / members to one spot to be able to easily sign up for an event and have all the information they need in one place.  They knew that if they didn’t have a one spot stop for members on community day then they wouldn’t get the participation they were hoping for. They wanted to make it easy for their members.  Megan and Melissa at ISACA loved the way Helper Helper provided just what they needed.

Benefits:

Organization: With Helper Helper, ISACA could group their members on teams based on Region and Location. They could assign an admin to each location so they could post event(s) for their members to select to participate in October.  Communication: Members could access Helper Helper on an iOS app, Android app or web app and sign up for the opportunity they wanted to participate in. When members signed up for events they’d get a calendar invite and automatic reminders to attend the event they signed up for. Administrators could communicate out any additional information that volunteers might need to know.  Reporting on the Impact: Then Helper Helper will collect all the volunteer data in realtime. Members could even upload photos of themselves volunteering and post directly to twitter or facebook. Additionally ISACA can attach surveys to the events or create a general survey to get feedback on how the events in their communities went so they can make the community day even stronger the next day.

Conclusion:

In 2021 ISACA’s community day was a huge success. They volunteered over 6400+ hours and organized 104 events in 44 different countries!  ISACA enjoyed using Helper Helper as it made the organization, communication and reporting seamless! ISACA staff emphasized that you want to partner with a company like Helper Helper whose client success support, technical training, and communications can help you along the way.