Catholic Charities Uses Get Connected to Simplify Multi-Location Reporting Requirements

In this case study, three Catholic Charities—Catholic Charities Diocese of Cleveland, Catholic Charities Dallas and Catholic Charities Milwaukee—share how they faced and overcame challenges in managing their volunteer networks across a variety of programs in multiple locations. 

With a growing volunteer base, they struggled to maintain engagement and accurately track volunteer hours. Manual processes overwhelmed the volunteer managers, causing inefficiencies and errors. So they took action and made changes to simplify their management and reporting with improved volunteer technology. 

One of their primary concerns was submitting reports and demographic data to Catholic Charities USA, which was complicated by inconsistent or duplicated Excel data. They also faced challenges with volunteer retention, needing better ways to engage and inform volunteers.

These issues ultimately hindered their ability to manage volunteers and meet reporting requirements effectively.

Let's dive into how they solved these challenges by using Get Connected volunteer technology.

3 Steps to Transforming Volunteer Engagement with Get Connected

Step 1: Streamlining Volunteer Recruitment with Get Connected’s Program Pages

Catholic Charities began by setting up individual program pages for each volunteer manager.

This allowed them to streamline recruitment for various missions within the organization.

Each program manager could post volunteer opportunities directly on the site, making it a go-to source for up-to-date volunteer information, which increased accessibility and trust for volunteers.

Step 2: Transforming Volunteer Reporting and Coordination with Get Connected

Implementing Get Connected’s volunteer registration and scheduling features allowed them to streamline the process of getting volunteers signed up for various events, food distributions, and community outreach programs. They customized volunteer opportunities by location and role, ensuring the right volunteers were matched to the right events.

The teams leveraged Get Connected's reporting capabilities, finding it much easier to track volunteer hours and submit detailed data to Catholic Charities USA.

Customizable reports allowed them to pull specific demographic information and hours without manual counts or risking duplication errors, which previously required time-consuming Excel management.

Step 3: Overcoming Coordination and Waiver Management Challenges

Challenge: Catholic Charities faced a challenge of coordinating volunteers across multiple locations and managing different shifts for a wide variety of service programs.

Solution: Get Connected provided an easy-to-use platform to manage multiple volunteer groups and locations, eliminating the need for manual scheduling and reducing errors. Volunteers could self-sign up for shifts, which improved accuracy and allowed staff to focus on other tasks.

Challenge: Waiver Management

Solution: With Get Connected, they incorporated digital waiver and policy acknowledgments during volunteer profile creation, ensuring all volunteers accepted necessary terms before participating. This solved the challenge of tracking physical paperwork and streamlined retention of these records for liability purposes.

Step 4: Scaling Volunteer Engagement and Community Building

Scalability: Get Connected allowed Catholic Charities to easily scale volunteer engagement as their needs grew. With the software, they could quickly add new volunteer opportunities for large-scale events, such as holiday food drives, without overburdening their staff.

Engagement: The automated reminder system in Get Connected helped boost volunteer engagement and reduced no-shows, ensuring higher participation rates for events.

Management: Get Connected’s reporting features gave Catholic Charities better insight into volunteer hours, participation, and activity across multiple sites, which allowed them to track engagement and assess performance metrics.

Catholic Charities scaled engagement by customizing pages for different volunteer needs, such as newsletters and one-time events. They also began hosting volunteer events, fostering a sense of community and engagement among volunteers.

The automated email blast feature further supported these efforts, ensuring timely, personalized communication with volunteers.

Step 5: Resolving Volunteer Management Challenges and Empowering Volunteers with Get Connected

After the initial implementation, Catholic Charities continued refining their use of Get Connected by utilizing advanced reporting tools to assess volunteer engagement and streamline communication. 

Ultimately, Get Connected helped them resolve their issues around coordination, scalability, and volunteer satisfaction by providing a centralized system for managing everything from sign-ups to communication.

Get Connected has a built-in Volunteer Resume feature, where volunteers could view their own hours and generate verification letters directly from their profiles. This empowered volunteers to track their service independently and reduced manual administrative load, especially for community service verifications.

Achieving Impact: Results and Outcomes with Get Connected

With Get Connected, three Catholic Charities greatly improved volunteer recruitment, engagement, and administrative efficiency. By centralizing volunteer coordination across multiple locations, they were able to significantly reduce administrative hours spent on manual scheduling and communication.

The platform’s self-sign-up features and automated reminders boosted volunteer retention and participation, leading to higher engagement rates for events. Additionally, the software’s reporting capabilities allowed Catholic Charities to track volunteer hours and activities more efficiently, enabling better insights into their programs and supporting long-term scalability. As a result, they were able to manage a larger, more engaged volunteer base while streamlining their operations.

Each volunteer manager used Get Connected’s customized program pages to successfully  recruit volunteers across multiple missions, making it easy for volunteers to find and respond to opportunities. This reflects a broader trend: studies show that centralized online volunteer platforms like Get Connected can boost engagement by up to 25% due to their accessibility and reliability (NTEN, 2022). 

Nationwide, 62% of nonprofits report that effective volunteer management software saves them significant administrative hours annually (NonProfit Times, 2014). In line with these studies, Catholic Charities found that Get Connected’s automated reporting tools allowed them to track and submit data quickly and accurately, reducing manual work hours and minimizing errors. Additionally, nonprofits can expect to cut repetitive tasks by as much as 30% with tools like Get Connected’s digital waivers and volunteer-managed profiles, which streamline compliance and verification (VolunteerMatch, 2021). 

Overall, Get Connected gave Catholic Charities scalable tools to enhance volunteer engagement and management, in line with trends showing digital solutions improve retention and operational efficiency across the sector (NTEN, 2022).