Giving groups of volunteers the ability to organize multiple projects and teams of volunteers on the website is one of the newest features at the NeighborLink website, which we're calling Service Events. The idea is to help groups of volunteers the ability to leverage technology to get more organized, track data, and give their volunteers access to the project information online. All in the name of being more effective.

Here is an example of how all this works and why it matters.

We have over 100 volunteers coming to us in July from area churches to spend a week working on projects. As we work with their leadership and attempt to keep all the projects we've helped them select organized, we have been adding them to a special Service Event we've created for their event. Each one of these projects have been selected from our long list of opportunities, selected by a Coach, and then added to this Service Event. Our NL staff as well as their leadership can now come to one spot on the website to see all the projects they're going to be completing. They can click into any one of these projects and see the full details including contact information, pictures, and any special instructions. The group can now send this link out to their volunteers teams to begin organizing and preparing them before they go out.

One additional feature we've added based on volunteer feedback is the feature to make the event private to only that group of volunteers. For instance, if a business wants to take on some projects but they want to make sure volunteers outside their community can't see the projects or join them, they can switch the event to private and only those registered volunteers associated with their community on the website can see the project.

No more copying and pasting data from our website into your own spreadsheet or onto a paper sign up sheet. All of the data is here and available to download in a master document as well as individual project documents available to give volunteers the data they need when they need it.

If you have questions on how this works, we'd love to demo it. Until then, take a look at the service events already being organize as an example of what's possible.