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Summary In planning for its largest event of the year, the annual Toys for Tots evening, the Atlanta Two Hundred implemented TrackVia with tremendous success:
Challenge The mission of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year, and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to needy children in the community in which the campaign is conducted. The primary goal of the non-profit organization is to deliver, through a shiny new toy at Christmas, a message of hope to needy youngsters that will motivate them to grow into responsible, productive, patriotic citizens and community leaders. With over 15 years of volunteer service experience, Steve Kilby knows what it takes to pull off a successful charity event. Five years ago, Kilby founded the Atlanta Two Hundred, an Atlanta organization that puts on three to four social charity networking events each year. The flagship event for the organization is its Marine Corps Toys for Tots evening. As this event grew from 600 attendees to over 3,000 people, Kilby realized he needed to find a better way to manage volunteers and attendees. Prior to TrackVia, Steve tracked his 300 volunteers and attendees via Outlook, Excel and CSV Files. The team’s volunteer efforts were constrained by the administrative tasks required to track volunteers, sponsorships, and attendees. Kilby knew there must be a more effective and efficient way to operate. The Atlanta Two Hundred is staffed by volunteers, therefore the more efficient the events are run the more people the organization can help. In addition, a more efficient process would be well received by the volunteers who have lives and full-time jobs outside the Atlanta Two Hundred. Solution Kilby and his team needed a tool that would allow them to centralize data management without going through a learning curve or needing to know SQL. He began searching for alternatives on Thanksgiving Day 2007 and sent inquiry emails to several database providers. “I was so surprised to receive a call on Thanksgiving Day from Chris Basham, TrackVia President. He knew what we needed, and he and his team had us up and running by Monday afternoon. All the operational things I hope to solve with a database, TrackVia solved,” says Kilby. Kilby was amazed that all team captains and volunteers were able to get up and running within 30 minutes. With TrackVia, individuals interested in volunteering now register via a web form powered by TrackVia. Once volunteers register via the web form, they are automatically populated in the volunteer database. There is no longer the need for manual entry, and it is easier to search for and communicate with volunteers. The ability to send email campaigns direct from his TrackVia database has also been a time saver for Kilby. This functionality has enabled him to send campaigns to solicit volunteers and keep volunteers informed of their tasks without the need to export contacts to another email program. TrackVia has also allowed the Atlanta Two Hundred to easily track table sponsorships and volunteer ticket sales. The database is flexible enough to accommodate image and URL field types for company logos and website addresses, respectively. Since all ticket sales are online, it was important for the Atlanta Two Hundred to have the ability to track ticket sales by volunteer. With TrackVia, it is easy to assign each volunteer a promo code so every ticket purchased is associated with a volunteer. Volunteers receive the recognition and credit they deserve, and the venue receives an accurate head count. With TrackVia’s published reports, it is easy to run custom views by promo code to determine individual and overall progress. Benefits It has been over a year since implementing TrackVia, and Kilby and his team of volunteers have definitely seen the benefits. Prior to TrackVia, Steve was responsible for managing all volunteers. With TrackVia, Steve is able to easily set permissions and assign different volunteers to his 30 team captains making tasks and projects significantly easier to manage. “TrackVia has saved our organization over 300 hours of administrative headaches over the course of planning for one event,” said Kilby. “Less time spent on administrative tasks, gives us more time to promote the event to the Atlanta community. This increases attendance and results in us helping more underprivileged children.” 
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