How Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity Coordinates Volunteers and Fundraising
To serve its mission of eliminating poverty housing, Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity needed a way to organize and communicate its extensive event and volunteer schedules. It found a solution that support its marketing efforts, too, with Smartsheet.
Industry
- Nonprofit
Organization Size
- Enterprise (10,000+)
Region
- North America
Platform Capabilities
"We have a very small team juggling hundreds of tasks. The beauty of using Smartsheet forms to collect all the RSVP info is that the attendees and Smartsheet do the work for you."
Director of Marketing and Communications
Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity’s (TCHFH) mission is to eliminate poverty housing from the Twin Cities area and make decent, affordable shelter for all people a matter of conscience. To fulfill its cause, the organization needed to organize its extensive event and volunteer schedules, with collaboration a key priority.
Brian Juntti, Director of Marketing and Communications at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, needed a tool that would help him manage a variety of marketing communications programs, from website updates to marketing campaigns.
"The type of work that is managed within the organization is broad - ranging from donor outreach and event planning to the construction of homes,” he says.
He also needed a solution that would keep everyone in the loop. When changes have to be made in the event spreadsheets, for example, it was essential that the whole team be notified. The solution was Smartsheet.
”Smartsheet enables us to stay informed at all times,“ says Juntti, who recently expanded its usage beyond volunteer schedules, adding event management with Smartsheet automating key parts of the workflow.
A great timesaver is Smartsheet forms. Juntti leveraged the tool to collect RSVPs from hundreds of VIPs, including board members, major donors, sponsors, and public officials, for a week of events as part of the 27th Annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area in October 2010.
Smartsheet forms collect the RSVP information provided by attendees and automatically populates the data in a Smartsheet where it then can be used at check-in and for follow-up donor cultivation.The team also sets alerts on specific rows so as information is changed, such as when volunteer photographers upload photos to a Smartsheet, team members are notified via email.
“My staff can then post these pictures on the Website or on our social media sites immediately,” added Juntti. “It shaves off hours of time emailing them around.”
