Senior Association Uses Track It Forward to Track Volunteer Socialization with Seniors

Smile On Seniors, an organization operated out of Phoenix, Arizona has been immensely impacted by COVID-19. An organization that focuses on helping seniors socialize has to almost completely reinvent themselves when a pandemic that primarily affects the elderly strikes. 

But, luckily for Smile On Seniors, Executive Director Levi Levertov has thought of many ways to keep the vision of Smile On Seniors alive. The answer: virtual opportunities, and a little bit of help from Track It Forward. 

What is Smile On Seniors? 

Smile on Seniors is an organization that provides social communities and religious communities to senior citizens. The organization does this by providing social gatherings such as educational classes, happy hours, pizza socials, barbeques, and movie nights to retirement communities and active independent seniors. 

Prior to Coronavirus, they had a packed schedule with a lot of activities for senior socialization. Smile On Seniors is dedicated to providing seniors with fun programs to enhance their aging lifestyles. 

The main focus of volunteers in Smile On Seniors is to service events and do one-on-one friendly visits to seniors. These visits are usually requested by family members, or people who want to make sure their loved one is check in on periodically or just has some social interaction. Smile On Seniors worked within active independent senior’s homes and in retirement communities.

Here is an example of a schedule that Smile on Seniors created pre-pandemic.

How Have They Been Operating in COVID-19?

COVID-19 was extremely unfortunate for programs like Smile On Seniors due to the harsh reality of the virus. Levi did not want Smile On Seniors’ mission to fold during this time. 

As shelter in place and quarantines took place, Levi realized that now more than ever, seniors needed some socialization and support. Everyone can get very down when they are stuck in their home, especially those that are alone. 

Levi started to think of ways that he could transform Smile on Seniors programs and events into virtual ones, and he did just that! 

Virtual Video Calls 

Starting with creating virtual communities for those who were interested, Levi contacted seniors and started promoting Zoom calls with guest speakers. He has these calls Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - each time a guest speaker volunteers their time. 

He has had musical performances, psychologists, police officers, and authors come to speak at these virtual conferences. 

Take-Out Meals

Instead of their monthly Shabbat or regular dinners, Levi is organizing take-out virtual gatherings monthly. 

Friendly Phone Calls

Lastly, instead of the one-on-one friendly visits, Levi organized for 55 volunteers to call, socialize, and check-in on seniors whose contact information they had accumulated. 

This became over 600 seniors that were added to a list of people to chat with weekly, or however long the volunteer felt fit for the senior. These volunteers are all professionals that have worked with the seniors before, and Levi trusted to make their own judgments on how often they should be called. 

Volunteers signed up to take on a certain amount of seniors, 3, 5, 10, 15 - however many they wanted to commit to calling on a regular basis to check-in, but mostly just to chat. 

There are four different services that could be offered by the friendly phone calls. 

1. Offer critical errands

2. Inform of virtual events 

3. Connect to Mental Health Professionals, for free! 

4. Socialize 

When Levi decided to contact around 600 seniors, he wanted a program where he could easily track that these phone calls were being made. 

“We have around 55 volunteers making phone calls. I don’t want to have to follow up each week and get 55 replies, this is where Track It Forward came in, there are volunteers that are making calls to every single senior that we have gotten contact information from,” says Levi.”

How Do They Use Track It Forward to Track Phone Calls? 

Levi does not need to know all the details from the calls that the volunteers make to the seniors. Most seniors just need someone to talk to, or to get them out of feeling lonely during quarantine. 

Levi told his volunteers that he can email or text him if a senior needs any services from a rabi, mental health professional, or even errand running. But, other than that he just wanted to know that his volunteers were making the calls. 

“So, what we have done is we use Track It Forward, not in the way to record hours, but to record phone calls,” says Levi.

Essentially, using the customized hour logging feature when he configured his Track It Forward site, Levi allows volunteers to log an “hour” if they have called the seniors that were assigned to them and that they felt needed to be called. 

Levi felt this could be a weekly task since he would manage it and check it weekly. So, he makes the options for volunteers to select the week that they are logging their “hours” - phone calls. 

In Track It Forward, volunteers input the week from the drop-down box and say how many times a week they called. Then it shows up as 1 “hour.” An hour means that they have done all that they committed to do,  however many calls that may be. 

Next, Levi uses the reports tool weekly to see which volunteers have completed their calls. If he sees that a volunteer was unable to complete the calls, he can just call the senior himself. 

“I follow up every week, thanking those who did it by looking at our reports, and reminding those that have not, or calling them myself,” explains Levi, “For me, because I am a little savvy in excel, the reports work and I can quickly export it.”

Track It Forward has allowed Levi to focus on creating other creative virtual events, rather than analyzing a form or shuffling through a mirage of emails from volunteers confirming or explaining their phone calls. 

Why Track It Forward? 

Ultimately, Track It Forward was not made to track phone calls. But, it works! Track It Forward aims to work around existing workflows. The software can be morphed and changed to work for a multitude of organizations and purposes, Smile On Seniors is the perfect example of this. 

Levi says, Track It Forward has given his volunteers, “the availability to put their hours in, not clutter an inbox. They can easily sign-in from their computer or phone. It’s literally sign-in and enters. It’s very easy. But, for us, it has been tremendous.”

Track It Forward allows him to track and manage the one-on-one phone call data with efficiency and in a quicker process. In these challenging times, it is important for him to be able to focus on as many things as possible. 

Levi looked at different software that may be useful to his organization. As a volunteer himself at the Phoenix Police Department, he is aware of time tracking software that they use, but it was not the right fit for this purpose.

Levi also recognizes that “I could always use a Google Form and try to create my own thing, but it really would not be the same.” 

Track It Forward has given him an automated version of a system that he was looking for, and a few other factors stood out to him. 

Pricing

“The first thing that stood out to me was the price,” says Levi, “Some of the other companies are quite cost-prohibitive.” 

Levi felt Track It Forward was able to give him exactly what he wanted after talking with our support hero, Melissa. The low price was very appealing to him as well. 

Check out our pricing here. 

Attentive Support Team

Talking to support during his search, Levi felt he gained a lot of information that helped make his decision to start using Track It Forward. 

Levi says, “I emailed tech support right away and they were very helpful. They explained to me what I can do, what I could not do, and how to make it work for me and my program, even though it is not specifically set up for how I wanted to use it. This was really helpful.”

Levi used email to contact support, but demo calls and trials are also strongly recommended when testing out Track It Forward. 

“I feel like the answer I got were clear, I understood it, and it was quick,” says Levi. 

Track It Forward is so happy to help organizations like Smile On Seniors, especially throughout the pandemic. It is so great to see how organizations use the software beyond basic needs. Levi says he will continue to use Track It Forward post-coronavirus for his one-on-one visits, and we look forward to that time!