Alpha Kappa Alpha Chapters Use Track It Forward

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated is a large international organization consisting of college-educated women working to tackle a multitude of critical issues impacting the communities in which they live. With 1,024 chapters and 330,000 members from all 50 states and over multiple nations,  the amount of service they complete is immense. 

Each chapter has the autonomy to host their own events and service opportunities for the community around them, and some larger national and international efforts. Every four years, Alpha Kappa Alpha International President identifies a number of program targets that permit the chapters to provide service in the implementation of the new program design.

The organization of program targets and committees that Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority holds makes a great category system for measuring impact within each chapter and within each project. The way that Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority is set up can be quite similar to how their Track It Forward accounts can be set up. Breaking down the hour logs into different projects and committees will help Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority track hours and accurately report their chapter’s progress. 

Alpha Kappa Alpha Program Targets

The current program targets and signature program are what each chapter focuses on and creates events for members to attend. There are also other events that each chapter can create on their own to contribute to the community! 

The following are the program targets for 2018-2022. 

Target 1 - HBCUs for Life: A Call to Action

• Chapters promote and market HBCUs to students to help sustain them. This may include research and publishing information. 

• Focus on funding and helping HBCU students complete their studies. Most chapters also participate in foundation activities to build scholarships for HBCU.

Target 2 - Women’s Healthcare and Wellness

• Raise community awareness and health events for multiple health and wellness issues that affect African American women. 

• A large emphasis is placed on Breast Cancer, Heart Health, Nutrition and Wellness, and Care for Caregivers. 

• AKA chapters have hosted mobile mammograms and health seminars in the community to support this target. 

Target 3 - Building Your Economic Legacy

• Improve economic literacy within the community by providing education on economic topics like assets, finance planning, and credit monitoring.

• Operation AKA Assist provides hands-on service to the homeless, the hungry and the needy.

• AKA also promotes local black businesses and entrepreneurs throughout the community through their endeavors. 

Target 4 - The Arts! 

• Showcase black artist talents throughout the community and help promote the importance of black artists. 

• Educate communities on the Harlem Renaissance and the importance of the Black Art Movement.

• This Program target can also be incorporated with Target 1, working with HBCUs.

Target 5 - Global Impact! 

• Chapters work with international chapters and organizations to do projects helping women entrepreneurs, and children in Africa, refugees in America, and more!

• Projects include sewing clothing for children in Haiti, donating shoes and glasses to those in need, and creating programs to support refugee integration. 

Signature Program - #CAP 

• The signature program  #CAP - College Admissions Process. Alpha Kappa Alpha helps educate high school students towards the college admissions process. This can be with SAT and ACT prep, access to scholarship listings, and help in their college search. 

Alpha Kappa Alpha Organization by Committees 

Another organization tactic for Alpha Kappa Alpha after program targets is committees. Each chapter has multiple committees that help the administrative aspect of each AKA chapter. Members can do different tasks and activities based on the committee. Here are some examples of the committees in each chapter.

Why is it important for Alpha Kappa Alpha to track member hours? 

AKA has chapters in different regions - Central, Far Western, Great Lakes, International, Mid Atlantic, Mid Western, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, South Central, and South-Eastern. Each year the directors of each region holds a conference to meet with the members in that region. The conference helps measure the impact of the chapter’s work, partly by reviewing each chapter’s hour log and reports. 

Angela Trapp, Technology Chair of Alpha Kappa Alpha Phi Pi Omega Chapter says: “At an international level, the sorority wants to measure our impact. The service hours that each member is contributing to each program target that we have is very important. It is very important for us to track as accurately as possible the hours that we spend towards our service programs as well as all the administrative work that goes into creating those projects and making them happen.”

One chapter spoke to us about how they use Track It Forward to track member hours. Technology Chair Angela Trapp, Alpha Kappa Alpha - Phi Pi Omega Chapter of Tyrone, Georgia.

The Alpha Kappa Alpha wanted to get away from using paper sign-in sheets and spreadsheets, as they found it was not tracking hours accurately. 

Alpha Kappa Alpha using volunteer software has proven to be one of the most efficient ways to track members and initiative progress.

How Alpha Kappa Alpha Chapters Can Use Track It Forward 

Alpha Kappa Alpha chapters can use Track It Forward to track member hours in different ways, but they both work! Track It Forward can be used in very basic aspects or feature-focused, whatever works best for the chapter. 

Set-Up 

The Technology Chair set up their Track It Forward accounts. Phi Pi Omega has the Vice President of the chapter as the owner, Angela as the overseeing administrator, two other technology committee members as day-to-day admins, and managing the Events Calendar, and then each committee head as a field approver. 

** A field approver is an admin on the Track It Forward site that can approve or sort hours if they are in that field. For example, Angela has given all committee members field approver access to approve and organize events and member hour logs that are placed under that committee. 

Phi Pi Omega has the hour log configured to showcase a dropdown box. So, when a member logs an hour, they must pick a coordinating activity- in this case, a committee or specific event. Here is an example below. 

Here is an example of an hour log form that an Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter can use to help run reports and data on their volunteers. And, more questions can be asked in the hour log to help narrow down the specific measurable category. 

The reports tool is really where this set-up and organization shine. Customizable reports are available to instantly download. Reports can be organized by members or activities. So, each chapter can pull hour reports for each activity they have entered in the drop-down box during set up. 

Event Calendar 

Alpha Kappa Alpha chapters can use Track It Forward basically like a virtual sign-in sheet, to track member hours in a basic function. This works nicely for many organizations and would be great for different Alpha Kappa Alpha chapters. 

Phi Pi Omega though uses the Event Calendar feature in Track It Forward to help plan events and to help members easily log their hours. The event calendar can be set up to help notify members of their RSVPs and of when to log hours. 

This is Phi Pi Omega’s settings for the event notifications. 

The event calendar helps Alpha Kappa Alpha chapters showcase to their members how easy it is to log hours. When a member signs up for an event, they can pre-fill their hour log with all the details from the event, so all the members have to do is submit them. As Angela says, “If you RSVP for an event, all of that is filled out for you. All you have to do is send your hours.” 

Here is what the event calendar for Phi Pi Omega looks like!

Alpha Kappa Alpha is a multi-generational chapter, so they have a bit of trouble when it comes to all members being comfortable with using technology. For the time being, the chapter will have its technology committee log member hours who do not wish to use the software. This helps keep the accuracy level up so Track It Forward can help report member impact. 

Beyond Track It Forward helping Alpha Kappa Alpha track member hours, they also can see how active certain members are just by looking at reports. 

“We wanted to have an effective way to document that a member is active, so they can maintain their eligibility to bring in more members,” says Angela. 

Track It Forward is happy to help Alpha Kappa Alpha Chapters track member hours, commitment, and showcase their tremendous impact on their communities!