Flash Volunteer Launches iPhone App, Upgrades Award-Winning Social-Change Platform
Online, Mobile Volunteerism Includes Community Tools, Real-Time Event Check-in, Other Social Features
SEATTLE – Sep 10 – Seattle-based Flash Volunteer today announced its first major redesign of its growing social-change platform, flashvolunteer.org, and the launch of a brand new iPhone App (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flash-volunteer/id353017547?mt=8).
“With this new app, and the many upgrades across the Flash Volunteer platform, we are empowering community building through volunteerism,” said Founder and Executive Director Brad Wilke. “By improving our easy-to-use online tools and adding mobile integration, we help connect volunteers to neighborhoods, nonprofits to volunteers, and people to projects.”
In just under three years, Flash Volunteer has grown into a stable, effective tool for nonprofits and volunteers to harness the spirit of community, provide a path of least resistance, and channel widespread altruistic good intentions into results. Flash Volunteer has helped organizers of events secure many additional service hours through the power of the social graph. Recent new feature releases have attracted even more volunteers to the system and they expect a major leap in user growth following the mobile release.
Built by volunteers, for volunteers, Flash Volunteer continues to grow and evolve with the help of professionals from diverse fields. Along the way, it has amassed in-kind design and development work valued at close to $1 million.
One hundred percent open source, Flash Volunteer is constantly attracting more designers and developers to the cause. By setting up specific top-priority projects for coders to knock down, a nimble core team enables the organization to incorporate new talent on the talent’s terms.
“What makes us tick, just like any other nonprofit in Seattle, is the people who generously contribute to our mission,” said Holly Wyrwich, Flash Volunteer Board President. “Our open door policy means key projects get completed, the help comes and goes as they please and Flash Volunteer can continue to advance towards the most innovative community engagement and volunteer service features available on the web.
More than 550 events have been posted on the site since its inception and the pace of new event creation is accelerating as a result of recent improvements. Likewise, positive user base growth over the past 12 months has proven the popularity of upgrades like improved recommendations based on user skills and interests, the ability to give a user “props,” the addition of past events timelines, hours volunteered and other features to user profiles and improvements to the site’s search function. With more than 1,000 users on the system now, the new features have attracted a new wave of interest with dozens more joining each month largely through word of mouth, social media sharing and new organizations adopting the platform for their event-organizing needs.
Flash Volunteer (www.flashvolunteer.org) seeks to build community and increase volunteerism in Seattle through the creation of a sustainable, user-friendly online platform to connect, inspire and mobilize volunteers to effect meaningful change on a neighborhood level.
Contacts:
Nate Cole Daum for Flash Volunteer: (206) 715-0846
Brad Wilke, Founder, Flash Volunteer: (206) 353-2369