ORGANIZATION: Green Crew of the Minnesota Valley Chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America
WEBSITE: Welcome to the Green Crew: Youth-led environmental leadership and conservation service+ - Green Crew
MISSION STATEMENT: We inspire and equip young people to lead the adventure of saving the Earth through the Green Crew, the environmental leadership and conservation service program of the Minnesota Valley Chapter of the Izaak Walton League.
ORGANIZATION’S CHALLENGE: The Green Crew struggles with fragmented event scheduling and communications for their volunteer activities. As a result, they’re looking for tech support to create a single integrated system that synchronizes event scheduling across multiple platforms, allows for easy registration, and delivers reminders according to participants’ communication preferences.
Currently, the organization uses BAND for event RSVPs and updates, but it does not integrate with the organization’s Google Calendar or WordPress website. This causes confusion when an event is added or changed because updates must be entered manually in multiple places. As a result, youth volunteers may miss key event details and important reminders as most don’t regularly check email or have BAND notifications enabled. Leaders have tried text groups for communicating event updates, but it’s too labor-intensive to organize these by specific events and messaging people not registered causes confusion. With tech support, leaders want to develop a seamless event scheduling and communication system to alleviate these challenges.
Leaders of Green Crew would like to identify and implement a tech solution that synchronizes events across the WordPress website, internal calendar, and communication channels. They would like this to be a single RSVP system that tracks registrations in one place and allows participants to receive automatic updates and/or reminders via SMS, email, or app notification. A few possible system solutions have been identified including Zapier, the SMS platform Twilio, or TimeTree. The organization would like to receive input from their tech volunteers before proceeding with any additional software.
By determining an integrated tech solution for event management, it will help ensure that Green Crew youth leaders and members receive the information they need, in the format they prefer, strengthening engagement and participation in activities.
POTENTIAL DELIVERABLE(S):
• Software review and selection
• System implementation and integration set-up
REQUESTED VOLUNTEER SKILL SETS: Solution Architecture, Software Development, Web Development, Zapier, Twilio or TimeTree expertise
This spot is for the Project Lead Role - Project Leads help facilitate the meetings, guiding the team through the agendas, keeping folks on task and conversation flowing, inclusive of all voices. Project leads do not need to have expertise in all aspects of the challenge but rather have strong leadership and facilitation skills. They will also help schedule the scoping call.
