City of Plano, Texas

BACKGROUND

Volunteers in Plano collaborate with city officials, corporate and civic organizations, faith-based organizations, schools, universities, and nonprofits, in order to create effective community initiatives that support and benefit the changing needs of this dynamic city.

Corina Sadler, CVA, is a National Service Commissioner in Texas and Hispanic Volunteer Engagement Professional specializing in local government programs over her 17-year career. Corina has trained volunteer managers from across the country in-person and virtually. As the Volunteer Resources Supervisor for the City of Plano, TX, she oversees the municipal engagement of volunteers across all city departments, engaging 10,500+ volunteers of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds each year.

When she joined the City of Plano in 2008, her program was looking for an online solution to manage their volunteer program. Up until that point, they had been utilizing a Microsoft Access database. “We also had a filing cabinet with an individual physical file folder for EVERY volunteer. It all came from a place of love, but it was insane,” shares Corina. “My program was 25 years old when I arrived, so it was actually a long-standing program. They had been working with these methods for 25 years.”

Corina helped her supervisor realize that the city needed specialized software going forward. “I arrived just in time to get it up and running,” says Corina.

CHALLENGES

An inadequate tool and manual data entry made the volunteer coordinator's job more challenging.

The Microsoft Access database was created by a volunteer, and it was functional for many years. However, the city could not find the information they required online, and they had no mechanism to produce reports, which posed a serious problem for the visibility and credibility of their volunteer program. “Organizations report on things that are important. So, if we’re not reporting on volunteers and volunteer engagement, that gives a sense that it’s unimportant,” says Corina.

Key Pain Points:

• Timely and accurate reporting was non-existent.
• Volunteers had no control or access over their personal information.
• Without a platform, volunteers were not as connected to the program.
• There was so much time wasted as everything was done manually.

Corina explains that because there was no online presence for the program (no platform) there was a disconnect.

Corina and her team believed that the lack of a platform to unite their volunteers under the same umbrella was making it more difficult for them to engage with volunteers. “City staff were not being supported in their engagement with volunteers. We couldn’t do it all ourselves with the volunteer office. So, it was a lot of wasted time.” She recalls, “the individual manila folders just boggled my mind as well as manually writing when a volunteer started or left and what department they were in. I know there are still programs out there running like that and it makes the coordinator position very difficult.”

Corina and her team's efforts to increase the program's capacity and innovation were stunted. "How could we increase our exposure and advertise both the curriculum and our job? We struggled to keep up as we were buried in paper,” remembers Corina.

When Corina used the ROI Calculator to determine how much time was being spent operating in this manner, it revealed that her team was going to save around 540 hours per year on tasks that could be automated via a volunteer management software solution.

Here’s a breakdown on how much time was spent in various tasks before using Better Impact:

ROI Calculator Data

JOURNEY

It was initially challenging to know what questions to ask, given that the program had been operating without volunteer management software (VMS) for 25 years.

The city vetted multiple software solutions via phone conversations and demonstrations. The staff at Better Impact helped walk them through the vetting process and eventually the city selected their VMS - Volunteer Impact. Corina recalls, “at that point, there were far fewer VMSs, compared to now. We looked at maybe five; Volgistics was one of them. The customer service was the big selling point for my boss. Having real people answering questions and helping us through a chat box was huge; whereas other services could not guarantee or offer that.”

With Volunteer Impact, they are now generating reports that they couldn’t get with Microsoft Access. “We’re getting every report you can imagine! For example, we know how many volunteers at our animal shelter program engaged with dogs in the last six months or how many volunteers in a particular zip code are under 16 and gave at least five hours. Volunteer Impact can tell you that information. Reports can get so granular – I love it!” Corina and her team have utilized these reporting functions to advance their recruitment and communications, as not everyone needs to receive every email.

“For annual reports, I’m still doing the classic number of hours and numbers of volunteers, but I’m working towards going beyond hours and numbers. For people who know how to look at trends and large amounts of data, it’s available, which is really cool,” explains Corina.

Given the direction that the profession is taking and that everything needs to be done virtually, Better Impact doesn’t rest on its laurels and does a fantastic job of supporting and listening to the field. “Some of the changes that were implemented in the system over the years were things that we asked for, which is incredible,” says Corina.