In April, Mayor Harrell announced that this year’s One Seattle Day of Service will take place on Saturday, May 20. This is a City-sponsored event that invites every Seattle neighbor to roll up their sleeves, come together, and give back to the community by signing up for a volunteer opportunity from among those available in each neighborhood across the city. Opportunities range from helping paint murals, picking up trash on beaches, removing graffiti, and weeding and mulching in community gardens.
The Mayor’s Office worked with Seattle IT’s GIS team to rapidly develop a lightweight map-based registration application that allows the public to quickly locate volunteer opportunities in their areas and sign up for them. There are 110 events on May 20, and most of the 3,000 volunteer slots have been filled.
One of those slots has been filled by Seattle IT’s CiviForm team. They will be leading one of the events to help residents learn about the City benefit and discount programs for which they may be eligible.
Beyond the public-facing registration tools, the GIS team also developed, for internal use, an event maintenance dashboard and automation. The dashboard sends email notifications to volunteers and performs some automated data updates to minimize the labor involved in managing the event.
This approach was so successful our GIS team has used it again for other public engagement activities, including the Seattle Police Department’s Seattle Night Out event and the Seattle Department of Transportation’s Adopt-a-Street program.
Volunteer positions at the One Seattle Day of Service are still available. Check out the registration portal and find the map and descriptions of each opportunity still available this Saturday and sign up!