1. SKYLINETECHNOLOGIES.COM (920) 437.1360 n (262) 522.8081
THE CHALLENGE
Community Outreach Temporary Services (COTS),
an Appleton-based group that serves the city’s
homeless, purchased a golf course and turned it into
community-supported agriculture enterprise with the
intent of growing vegetables and fruits year-round
while providing life skills training to those in need.
Riverview Gardens hoped to build a volunteer army to
support and maintain the gardens and needed a way
to manage the opportunities and volunteers as well as
track hours toward community service work for those
performing it. The gardens are self-sustaining and
hiring a volunteer coordinator was not an option.
RIVERVIEW GARDENS
Simplified Volunteer and Task Management
Skyline partnered with Riverview Gardens and COTS in Appleton to build a Volunteer Management System for the
gardens which occupies the site of the old Riverview Country Club in Appleton. The Skyline Opportunity System
consists of a web-based application and is also available for Android, iOS and Windows 8.
Riverview Gardens uses the Skyline Opportunity System exclusively to manage all individual volunteers and
opportunities. The system allows users to create a profile and select volunteering opportunities according to their
interests and availability.
Once a volunteer is registered and logged in to the system, they see a dashboard showing opportunities that may
be of interest to them (based on the interests they identified). They can also see scheduled and past opportunities
as well as a complete calendar which would allow them to choose a task that doesn’t exactly match their
interests.
The Skyline Opportunity System dashboard also contains metrics allowing volunteers to see how many hours they
have volunteered in total or broken down by a date range.
Riverview Gardens will also serve as a job training location for COTS and as a source for community service hours.
The volunteer management system will allow COTS and Riverview staff to log and verify community service hours
either via the online system or via the mobile apps if they are out in the gardens.
THE SOLUTION
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2. THE BENEFITS
Simplified Task Management
Riverview Gardens is a 77-acre
community greenspace containing
dozens of greenhouses, hoop houses
and gardens. Additionally there are
miles of recreational trails, picnic ta-
bles and park spaces that need to be
maintained, creating thousands of
volunteer opportunities.
The Skyline Opportunity system
makes it possible for Riverview
Gardens’ staff to manage the myriad
of volunteer opportunities they have
right at the volunteer locations.
Whether in a hoop house, out on the
trail or knee deep in the mud of a
vegetable patch, Riverview’s volun-
teer management system allows
them to manage a large and diverse
group of volunteers where they need
to most ... in the field.
Lean Staffing
Maintaining the community gardens
and green spaces takes hundreds of
volunteers. Skyline built a volunteer
management system for Riverview
Gardens that allows staff access but
more importantly allows volunteers
to sign up for and manage their
opportunities via an online tool.
Volunteers can choose dates and
tasks that fit their schedule and make
changes as needed without calling or
visiting the gardens.
The Skyline Opportunity System has
allowed Riverview Gardens to man-
age hundreds of volunteers without
hiring a volunteer coordinator saving
them tens of thousands of dollars
annually.
Enjoyable Volunteer Experience
Not only does the Skyline Opportunity
System provide benefits to Riverview
Gardens, it provides an extremely en-
joyable experience to the volunteer!
Volunteers create a profile and indi-
cate their areas of interest. The system
provides a list of opportunities based
on the interests the volunteer has
chosen. Volunteers choose the oppor-
tunities that fit their schedules and
liking so they are guaranteed to be
assigned to tasks they’ll enjoy. Addi-
tionally, volunteers can make changes
to their opportunities or reschedule
online quickly and easily without
calling the Garden.
The system also provides volunteers
with reports on number of hours
worked and past opportunities.
SKYLINETECHNOLOGIES.COM (920) 437.1360 n (262) 522.8081
Web API was used to create a custom service back end that powers the volunteer management system. This
ensures that today’s mobile devices as well as those yet to be dreamed up will be able to utilize the system.
Native iOS application ensures high performance.
Xamarian’s Mono stack was used to develop the Android app and to help minimize the impact of designing
for the diversity of Android devices.
The Windows 8 app was developed using Microsoft’s WinJS/HTML framework. It was one of the first volunteer
management applications in the Windows 8 store.
THE TECHNOLOGY
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