Starlight Children’s Foundation: 150% increase in recruitment and efficiency

Introduction

Starlight Children’s Foundation brightens the lives of seriously ill children, adolescents and their families by replacing pain, fear and stress with fun, joy and laughter. Since its establishment in 1988, Starlight has expanded to become the broadest reaching children’s charity in Australia and is the most trusted children’s charity in Australia (AMR Charity Reputation Index 2016). Last year Starlight created 426,000 Starlight experiences for children and their families and granted 525 life-changing Starlight Wishes.

In 2016 Starlight’s volunteers supported over 250 events across the country. Each event was different, some requiring 1 volunteer for an hour, others might have 2,000 volunteers across 10 locations (and 3 different time zones). This can extend across days or even weeks, all with varying shift times. These events require a team of dedicated volunteers and a lot of organisation behind the scenes to make each event happen.

The Challenge

Previously Starlight recruited and managed their event volunteers through a combination of phone calls, emails, spreadsheets, and manually entering the data into a database. Whilst this was ok when there were only a few events, it proved time-consuming, stressful and required a great deal of manpower to oversee when the number of events and volunteers grew. This level of manpower took valuable staff away from other important tasks, including building relationships with their volunteers.

As the number of events expanded, the National Volunteer Manager Kerry Shields knew there had to be a better way and looked to find a technology solution that would meet this increased business need. Not able to find the ‘perfect solution’ Kerry and her team set out to develop a website portal that could not only provide the rostering capability but would also help to create a sense of community with the growing number of volunteers. However, a limited budget meant that the dream of all the bells and whistles was not realised in this project, but it did provide proof that volunteers had an appetite for change and adapted quickly when using new technology.

When the number of volunteers registered on the site reached 8,000, it was clear further improvements were needed to support this level of growth and activity. Rather than look to invest more into this website, Starlight looked again at the market and this time came across a purpose-built events rostering platform, Rosterfy.

The Solution

Rosterfy enabled Starlight to improve efficiency and consistency across recruitment, communications, scheduling and the management of their volunteers throughout the country.