Looking for Easy Ways to Volunteer? There’s an App for That! with Stephanie Page (Episode #119)
What if you could instantly connect with people who share your passions, and then, spur of the moment, do something fun together that makes the world a better place. Oh, and while you are expanding your friend network, you’d also be learning about your community and building your skills and resume! Turns out, all that is very possible, and today’s guest may send you spinning off into a new life of possibility. Stephanie Page is co-founder of POINT, the app and website that the world has needed for too long. (Think Uber meets volunteerism.)
Episode Highlights
About Our Guest:
Stephanie is the Head of Growth & Partnerships for POINT, a volunteer app and management tool that is a remarkable example of an innovation that is a win/win/win scenario for everyone.
The POINT app (or website) has a simple yet powerful goal: It connects people with the impulse to do a bit of good in the world, with nonprofits that need volunteers.
Of course, this helps organizations soar in their ability to be impactful and best of all, POINT has designed the system so as to make its services free to nonprofits.
Point was recognized by the Gates Foundation for its work in the nonprofit tech space, and is now available in all 50 states and has grown four times since January 2022, she said.
So far, POINT has signed up 60,000 volunteers and improved the reach and results for 1500 nonprofits across 50 states: organizations like Habitat for Humanity, The American Cancer Society, animal rescue charities, local community-building nonprofits, diaper banks, food pantries, and Special Olympics. You name it! If you’ve got a passion to help a particular cause, the POINT app can connect you.
POINT, which officially launched in 2016, was an idea born out of frustration: the founders realized they had all this tech available at their fingertips – to order food from bed at 11 pm, or book a hotel anywhere in the world – but they couldn’t just “do good” on the spur of the moment with an organized group. If they wanted to have some fun with friends on a Saturday, doing something to help some part of their community, those opportunities were much harder to find.
The system for volunteering, before POINT came into existence, often involved having to do a lot of personal research, then make many phone calls days or weeks in advance. Then there would be forms to fill out and through it all, you had to hope the organization was staffed well enough to make your efforts worthwhile.
Here at the Goodness Exchange, we see the repercussions of this gap everyday when we interview or write about amazing founders from the nonprofit world who are struggling to get traction.
And on the other hand, we hear from people who want to contribute to a better world but just don’t know where to start.
That’s where POINT comes in! There’s even a hashtag (#domoregood)!
With the free app or through the website on a laptop, users can pick out causes they care about (animals, conservation, poverty), find an event (sorted by date), click and go.
The more I learned about POINT and the promise of its impact, the more urgent my interest in sharing this became, and I have just one question: Why has it taken so long to have this available?
On the nonprofit side, the dashboard allows organizations to post events, manage volunteers, track organizational data and access live reports – kind of like a mix between Salesforce and Eventbrite.
And on the corporate sponsor side, companies can instantly connect their workforce to volunteering opportunities and manage all the details in online pathways created to make the whole system seamless.
Everybody wins.
Please help us welcome POINT and Stephanie page to the growing Conspiracy of Goodness movement and the cohort of great people coming together here at the Goodness Exchange to make the world a better place for us all.
Resources Mentioned:
- POINT’s mission
- Invite a nonprofit
- Download the app to volunteer (App Store, Google Play, or get started on the web)
- Forbes article about POINT
Show Notes
- The volunteer app
- How POINT started
- Volunteerism has been going down
- Millenials and Gen Z care a lot about more specific nonprofits
- “Go volunteer and go get a drink after.”
- Dreams of POINT
- We want volunteering to be built in people’s daily lives
- Make volunteering a part of family values
- POINT focuses on the agency level
- Why should people volunteer?
- People who volunteer feel more satisfaction than people who don’t
- The selfish reason to volunteer
- Website: POINT
- Instagram: pointapp
- Facebook: Point
- Twitter: POINT
- POINT app as a recruiting tool
- POINT app is free to nonprofits
- Volunteering is the best way to grow your resume
- Employee volunteer program
- Business and nonprofit collaboration
- Trustworthiness
- Austin Diaper Bank uses POINT
