Park Organization Tracks Time For Grants & Sponsorships

For many nonprofits, no matter how big, financial aid in the form of grants and sponsorships are game-changing. While organizations might have a large, committed community, and volunteers that spend hours and hours of time to help - there is always a benefit to grants and sponsorships! 

Friends of the Hammock, Inc. is an organization that has many wonderful volunteers who commit and donate up to 100 hours a month making Hammock Park in Dunedin, Florida a better place! Volunteers help build trails and boardwalks, preserve the Gopher Tortise population, present a butterfly garden, and assist at events for fundraising and bettering the park! 

They have even taken place in preserving and tracking gopher tortoise habitats and letting the state of Florida know about this species in their park! 

Friends of the Hammock, Inc. is a small nonprofit that has been able to find volunteer time tracking software within their budget that allows them to track volunteer hours, put these volunteer hours into categories, and pull reports for a potential grant application, match grant data, and sponsorship! 

Oftentimes, potential sponsors and organizations that provide grants to nonprofits want to see that there is community and work being done that will support the nonprofit after the gift is given. In addition, match-grants are an option for some organizations that provide grants, meaning they will give a certain dollar amount for every volunteer hour donated. For match-grants, having an accurate volunteer time tracking system is critical. 

To read more about time tracking and grants, visit this article! 

Pam Hillestad is the Volunteer Leader and Board Member of Friends of the Hammock, and she found Track it Forward and decided to start using it for her organization, with the main goal of tracking volunteer hours for additional data when approaching sponsors and grants. 

She had experience in a different nonprofit organization working with a larger volunteer management software, but she wanted to keep this software simple for the older volunteers within the organization, and to just be able to easily track volunteer time and pull reports! 

Pam says, “I wanted to find something free or less expensive, and I found Track It Forward. It has worked perfectly for us. It’s been amazing.” 

Track It Forward allows managers like Pam to log volunteer hours on behalf of volunteers in case there is any sort of issue. “We have some older people that struggle with technology, so they’ll just email me and I’ll log them for them. It’s been really great,” says Pam. 

While not all her volunteers have decided to use Track It Forward, she says most of them use the app and are able to log their hours right after they volunteer. And, if they forget, she sends them a monthly reminder and they can do it quickly when they receive that! 

Beyond simply logging hours into the hour log, Pam has actually found the mass email feature within Track It Forward to be helpful as well. She has been able to plan last-minute volunteer opportunities by emailing active volunteers right from Track It Forward. This allows volunteers to be given even more opportunities and feel more connected to volunteer opportunities. Pam thinks there has been a spike in volunteering in general due to this feature and how they use it! 

Lastly, Friends of The Hammock uses categories to help showcase specifically the different areas that volunteers work towards. This can either be for creating specific reports for sponsors that want to invest in these areas, or it can be for committees to showcase to the board the amount of work they have been doing. 

Allocating different categories for volunteer hours allows Friends of The Hammock to really showcase the power of their volunteers - both in administration and in volunteer initiatives within the park!  

Some nonprofit organizations might struggle transitioning to using volunteer software because they have to get approval from a board. We know this might be difficult, but Pam says, “It was an easy sell to the board because it is not a very expensive software. One of the things about Track It Forward that is really cool is that it does a lot for not a lot of money.” 

Track It Forward can be used for many different organizations and many different purposes. One of the primary functions and features is a time tracking to help organizations feel more organized, calculate the value of their volunteers, and be given data instantly. This is exactly how Friends of The Hammock uses Track It Forward! 

Pam says, “It’s given us the capability to do things we never did before. It’s helped us to grow into a much more organized group, and it is like taking the next step forward after being a very small organization. I feel like we are moving more into the big-time category in the sense that we can reach donors and sponsors and have information at our fingertips.”