3 Tips to Conducting a Successful Pit Count
According to HUD Exchange, “The Point-in-Time (PIT) count is a count of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons on a single night in January. HUD requires that Continuums of Care (CoCs) conduct an annual count of homeless persons who are sheltered in emergency shelter, transitional housing, and Safe Havens on a single night.”
This year we’ve partnered with 5 unique organizations to conduct their 2020 Point-in-Time counts, from which we have come up with these 3 tips for conducting a successful count:
Surveys: Keep your surveys simple and straight to the point. It is likely going to be a cold night and you and your volunteers are hoping to survey as many individuals as possible. Figure out what data you need to collect and keep your survey trimmed down to collect that data. HUD model survey templates are thorough, in-depth and a great place to start gathering some examples of questions and answers.
Volunteers: A Point-in-Time count cannot succeed without wonderful volunteers, recruit them early! Make all the details about your count known; list the dates and times of the count and the pre-count training under events on your website and share it out on social media. Be sure to have links for individuals to sign up as a volunteer.
Mobile Solutions: Trying to read other’s handwriting (that was written in the dark) and enter the information into a CRM can be tedious, not to mention frustrating. Ditch the clipboards, eliminate data entry and go mobile! Additional perks to going mobile:
- Mobile devices provide the light needed to complete the survey in the dark and the questions are much easier for both the volunteer and participant to read and understand
- Devices that are GPS enabled (like the ones provided by Grassroots Unwired) will make your volunteers feel more safe and allow headquarters to see where everyone is located at all times.
- With the Grassroots Unwired platform: all of the data being collected the night of the count is going back to our servers in real-time, eliminating data entry completely and allowing you to quickly pull reports containing the data you need.
- Last but not least, going mobile saves trees!
Additionally, checkout the PIT count work we’ve done in the past.
The Evolution of the 4EventDay Mobile App
We get it! There are a ton of moving parts to managing a successful peer-to-peer fundraising event. It can quickly get overwhelming! Our goal? Make it easier on you, your volunteers and ensure your participants have the best day-of experience. We are transforming the interactions that non-profits and their participants have on the day of their events through our 4EventDay mobile app. And after every event, we continue to ask, “What can we do to make it even better?”
We’ve added several groundbreaking features to our 4EventDay mobile app that will ensure your event managers and volunteers are working more efficiently and your participants are having the best experience.
- The ability to mark a participant as “finished”: This is especially helpful for swim events as a safety measure to ensure all swimmers have left the water.
- Enforce fundraising minimums: Our day-of reports now include updated totals of dollars raised on your P2P site so you know if participants have met their fundraising goal.
- Change participant race type on the fly: Have a participant that wants to change their race distance or type? No problem.
- Turn your participants into advocates: Use our advocacy tools to capture petition signatures and send emails to legislators.
- Enhanced search options: Filter by participant status: checked-in, not checked-in or finished to see how many participants are in each status and who they are. Search by participant name, team name or bib number to find an individual.
- Assign bib numbers at check-in: Never again will you be doing late night bib organization. Never again will volunteers be stuck shuffling through piles of envelopes to find a preassigned bib number.
- Display waiver at check-in: Have participants sign a waiver when they check-in.
- Enhanced donation options: Give individuals paying by credit card the option to cover credit card transaction fees so that their full donation and/or registration fee goes towards your cause. Also, add recurring donors to your organization by asking participants to turn their registration fee into a monthly or annual donation.
- Auto-fill participant info for donations: If a participant wants to donate to themselves, they no longer need to fill in their information to do so. Our app can auto-fill their information from their registration for the donation capture.
- Anonymous donation capture: Allow passerby to make a quick donation to your cause without being required to provide personal information.
FEATURE UPDATE: Assign Bib Numbers at Check-In
We are excited to announce yet another innovative new feature: assigning bib numbers at check-in! Our development team has been working hard so that the Grassroots Unwired 4EventDay mobile app can have the ability for volunteers to assign a participant’s bib number and/or race tracking ID during the mobile check-in process. This new feature makes check-in faster, more efficient and provides a positive experience for your participants.
Feature Update: The Ability to Mark a Participant as Finished!
The Why:
Our client, Swim Across America, unites the swimming community by hosting benefit swims that raise money to fund life saving cancer research and clinical trials. They came to us with a new feature request to address an important safety issue they have on the day of their peer-to-peer events. Swim Across America needed the ability to identify when a swimmer has left the water. They needed to be able to see if everyone made it out of the water safely and in turn know how many individuals (if any) are still in the water.
The Shots Story- A Tale of How Language Barriers Make a Difference!
When my father was 18 years he worked as a busboy, clearing dishes in upscale restaurants in downtown Long Beach, California.
It was his first year in the United States, and like many, many, immigrants chasing the American Dream, he went to community college for evening classes to learn English.
How to Spend Your P2P Event Advertising Budget More Effectively
Let’s be honest, your advertising budget for your peer-to-peer event is never as big as you would like or even need it to be. That’s why collecting data around what ad method is most successful in getting individuals to participate in your event is imperative to ensure you are spending your advertising dollars where it truly counts!
Employee Spotlight: Stephanie Guzmán
Stephanie Guzmán is Grassroots Unwired’s Designer/UX/Project Manager. Read more to learn about her first few months on the team and her insights on user experience, young graduate life adjustment, and Amish Market pretzel logs.
How to Improve Event Day Participant Retention
As you know, keeping a participant involved in your peer-to-peer events year over year isn’t always easy. But by adding mobile technology to the day of your event, it can be! We find that by creating a smoother and more efficient day-of experience, you can create a lasting impression and ensure higher participant retention rates.
Use Mobile Technology to Create a Positive Experience from the Start
Here’s how you can use mobile technology to create a positive experience from the start, leaving participants with a positive impression that lasts:
Make Donor Retention a Priority on the Day of Your Event
What is your strategy for using a peer-to-peer event to grow your donor base? Do you have a protocol to engage and retain first-time participants? Or do the majority of these people end up being “one and done” – engaged for the day but not for the future? In our experience, we’ve found that organizations often feel forced to choose the latter.
[Guest Post] Got Technology Blind Spots? Ask These 8 Questions Before the Demo!
![[Guest Post] Got Technology Blind Spots? Ask These 8 Questions Before the Demo!](https://www.grassrootsunwired.com/media/blog-post-website.png)
Choosing a new software platform for your nonprofit can cause lots of stress. But, in my experience, there’s one part of the process that especially makes nonprofit accidental techies freak out a little bit.
There are three key phases to choosing a new software platform: