Customer Success Story CARES

Using InitLive and MapTag, Ottawa Cares was able to rapidly deploy volunteers for food bank delivery to multiple communities in need.

Interview with Josh Cassidy, Community Response Coordinator

Summary Ottawa Cares is an initiative founded Ottawa Cares recruits and facilitates by the Manor Park Community volunteers to deliver food from food Council in partnership with community banks to residents.In October of associations: Cardinal Glen, 2020, Ottawa Cares launched , , Manor ‘Dinner is Served’. A prepared meal Park, Overbrook, , and program distributing prepared meals Vanier. Ottawa Cares organizes to families through local schools and community and city ward-wide community groups. responses to COVID-19. 190+ 15K+ 510+ 11+ Volunteers Food Hampers Shifts Opportunities Delivered

“InitLives flexibility in creating volunteer shifts and curating schedules is incredible. Volunteers really appreciated the ability to self-sign up and the flexibility to fit their volunteering around their busy life, work, and family schedules.” Commented Josh Cassidy. Challenge Josh Cassidy explained, ”Before we had InitLive, I had a system of spreadsheets and forms that was confusing, time-consuming, and prone to mistakes. Volunteers would submit their weekly availability through the Ottawa Cares website. I would take that information, and I would use it to put together a schedule, it took me forever. It was difficult to manage, not just scheduling but making changes to that schedule as well.” “Before InitLive and MapTag, I would send volunteers a spreadsheet table with their delivery information. With so many deliveries, I was not able to organize this information into an efficient route for volunteers. Before each shift, it would be up to the volunteers to look at their delivery addresses and determine the most efficient route.” Josh explained

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Ottawa Cares chose InitLive to streamline its volunteer recruitment and management process and MapTag to deploy scheduled volunteer drivers to optimize delivery routes for greater efficiency. Ottawa Cares supports each food bank that utilizes Link2Feed’s Client Management System to identify and report each client’s need and address. This information is taken anonymized and entered into MapTag, a route optimization system. The Incredible Integration entire solution provides scheduled volunteers “The integration between InitLive optimized delivery routes and an optimized number and MapTag has been incredible. We of food hampers based on their vehicle capacity. have been able to streamline our This end-to-end solution enables Ottawa Cares to workflow to the point where we maximize how many clients can be served in a could take on new food banks single volunteer shift, allowing them to scale without an increase in staff resources” explained Josh.” up operations to meet growing demands.

Key Functionalities

VOLUNTEER SELF-SIGN UP ROUTE OPTIMIZATION “InitLive provides the ability to have volunteers “I know that volunteers really appreciated when we self-sign up for shifts on their own. We simply started using routing software. They can complete create the opportunities, create the volunteer their deliveries in the order they are listed and be shifts and send them out for self-signup. confident it will be the most efficient delivery route Volunteer shifts are almost always full within a possible,” Josh explained. few hours of sending them out,” explained Josh.

VENUE MANAGEMENT OPERATIONAL TIME SAVINGS "We've grown to appreciate InitLive’s ability to Josh explains, “Volunteers really appreciated host separate venues within an opportunity. This the route optimization MapTag provides. We've allows Ottawa Cares to share volunteers between been able to save staff hours because of the the different food bank locations! Because of this integrations that then have allowed us to feature, it is incredibly rare for us to have no increase the number of food banks that we're registrations for a volunteer shift!” explained Josh. serving.”

VOLUNTEER RETAINMENT VOLUNTEER SAFETY “We firmly believe that staying organized "There has been an incredible demand from contributes to volunteers returning for more shifts. volunteers as the exposure risk for COVID-19 is low. Volunteers can register for shifts from their From signup to delivery, we want this to be a own homes and the pickup and drop off of food simple process for volunteers. InitLive’s simple hampers is contactless. Many volunteers have and flexible software has been paramount in come to us specifically because they are keeping us organized ” explained Josh. looking for COVID safe volunteer opportunities." Josh explained.

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