DC Students Serve
Idea: The DC Student Alliance, a
regional coalition of student governments in the DC metropolitan area,
wanted to promote student volunteerism in the area. They decided to
create a one-day service event where eight different campuses would
participate in the same service project together. It would have been the
largest and most collaborative student-run event of its kind in the
region's history.
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To-do:
- Find and contact dozens of student service organizations to participate
- Figure out how to keep multiple campuses together on centralized project
- Find a service site to accommodate the students
- Identify financing for the project
- Plan transportation logistics between the universities and service site
- Find and contact dozens of student service organizations to participate
- Figure out how to keep multiple campuses together on centralized project
- Find a service site to accommodate the students
- Identify financing for the project
- Plan transportation logistics between the universities and service site
As it happened...
Process - Not each student government was involved with service at their school, so DCSA had to build a list of organizations at 8 different campuses to approach about the service event - Had to sift through different universities' websites to find list of student organizations and guess which ones might be interested in the event. Not each list was current, and contact info was often out of date. - Once DCSA recruited organizations, they had to use giant email threads and frequent conference calls to keep everyone on the same page - Tedious communications took time away from financing and arranging actual service event Results: - The event took place with limited participation and had to be spread between three different service sites. - Limited funding - Many logistics were left to individual campuses to manage, leading to confusion between schools. |
If they had Cahoots...
Process - Create project planning page on Cahoots - Invite organizations who have done service in the past to follow or help plan the project. - Connect with local businesses to sponsor event - Use Cahoots resources page to find transportation options Results: - Less time spent on logistics of planning event, and more time spend planning the logistics of actual event. - More successful, higher-impact day of service |
