Accurate Tracking and Reporting with an Easy-to-Use Mobile App

West Bend is a close-knit community of just over 30,000 residents situated along the Milwaukee River in Wisconsin. The city hosts a variety of community events throughout the year, many of which are supported by the West Bend Police Cadets: a local youth organization affiliated with the city police department. The West Bend Police Cadets program offers students ages 14-21 an opportunity to learn more about local governance and law enforcement careers while giving back to their community.

Dispatcher Dionne Hall has been a mentor in the police cadet program for over four years and has worked in law enforcement support for twenty years. Since becoming a mentor, she has taken it upon herself to organize and administer the program. “I found out we were really slacking on keeping track of volunteer hours and we were disorganized and unofficial. I wanted to give the post more legitimacy with hours, and it helps the kids get a solid working knowledge of how much effort they put in.”

Dionne found a way to provide this legitimacy with Track it Forward. Tracking volunteer hours is important for the program administration and the cadets themselves. “A lot of kids are going on to college and/or a law enforcement career and they are doing a huge amount of community service--some up to 100 hours in just a year; so [now] we can give them that information to use for scholarships, applications, and honor societies,” says Dionne. 

The West Bend Police Cadets program tracks other volunteer data as well with Track it Forward. Dionne uses custom settings to categorize meetings and events into non-service hours and community service hours. This data is then used to record eligibility for in-house awards and leadership positions. In the past this process was completely manual, and mentors had to go through hundreds of pages of paper volunteer sheets to collect the data.

Dionne can now easily collect this data and report on it. The reporting tool has become a crucial feature for program administration. The ability to run custom reports and export the data from Track it Forward allows Dionne to share outcomes with key stakeholders like the police department itself. “Being able to run a report and export it and get all these statistics...really legitimizes us as an entity for the administration of the police department. We can show [how much] time we contribute to the police department events and community events.”

“The mobile app is a big feature. They love it!”

 Track it Forward’s mobile app has also simplified the volunteering process for cadets. “The mobile app is a big feature. They [the cadets] love it!” Dionne says. The students are so used to being on their phones that there’s no training required. She simply instructs new cadets to download the app and create an account, which they use to sign up for meetings, community service events, police ride-alongs, and more. The West Bend Police Cadets program has also made use of the embeddable widgets Track it Forward offers, such as the calendar integration. The calendar of events in Track it Forward is displayed prominently on their website. “Kids just want to go online and google things,” Dionne says. “We got some new kids at meetings solely through the online calendar; they just downloaded Track it Forward and started using it right away to sign up for a meeting before ever coming to the station.”

The West Bend Police Cadets program gives local youth a unique opportunity to explore law enforcement careers while supporting the community by participating in events year-round, from the Washington County Fair to the West Bend Christmas Parade. Now that they’re using Track it Forward, they have even more to show for their efforts. Students can easily sign up for cadet meetings and volunteer opportunities from their mobile phones. Dionne and other mentors can easily track and share cadet progress, and the West Bend Police Department can use this data to measure return on investment for the program.