Founded in 1989, Hands On Atlanta mobilizes the Atlanta community to tackle the city’s most pressing challenges through volunteer service, with a primary focus on education and youth development. Each year, they connect tens of thousands of volunteers with meaningful opportunities in partnership with over 400 nonprofits and schools throughout Greater Atlanta.

Their mission is simple yet powerful: “We help people do something good.” Whether it’s tutoring a child, revitalizing a neighborhood park, or delivering meals to seniors, Hands On Atlanta believes everyone can be a changemaker.

Challenges

As Hands On Atlanta’s programming expanded and more volunteers engaged with their mission, the limitations of their legacy volunteer management system became increasingly evident. What once may have supported a smaller operation was no longer sustainable for a growing, high-impact organization.

One of the biggest challenges was inefficient coordination. Managing thousands of volunteer schedules, aligning them with nonprofit partner needs, and communicating updates or confirmations required juggling multiple disconnected tools. This created a cumbersome, time-consuming process for staff, leaving little room for strategic work or program innovation.

The system also lacked robust data and insights, making it difficult to accurately track and report on volunteer hours, participation rates, and overall impact. Staff members were forced to rely on manual processes to extract information for stakeholders, slowing down reporting and reducing the team’s ability to make data-informed decisions.

As volunteerism grew year over year, the platform presented scalability issues. It simply couldn’t keep up with the volume of users, events, and partner organizations, leading to bottlenecks and frustrations for everyone involved.

Lastly, the legacy system created a poor user experience for both volunteers and nonprofit partners. Navigation was often unintuitive, and finding or signing up for the right opportunities could be frustrating. These friction points posed a barrier to deeper community engagement and long-term retention.

How Golden Helped

Simplified Volunteer Registration and Engagement

Since launching Golden in late 2021, Hands On Atlanta has seen dramatic growth in volunteer participation and retention, an outcome directly tied to Golden’s user-friendly experience. 

In 2021, the organization engaged 24,737 volunteers who contributed 76,619 hours of service. Just three years later, they’re on track in 2025 to engage over 75,000 volunteers and deliver 225,000 service hours—a more than 3x increase in both metrics since adopting Golden.

Golden’s streamlined registration process makes it easier than ever for people to get involved. Volunteers now only need to provide a few key pieces of information, removing barriers that previously led to drop-off. Once registered, volunteers are automatically added to email lists, enabling consistent engagement and communication over time.

The improved visual design of Golden’s opportunity listings has also had a measurable impact. Events are now easier to browse and more appealing to potential volunteers, encouraging more sign-ups across Hands On Atlanta’s network of programs and nonprofit partners.

Time-Saving Operational Tools

As volunteer numbers surged—from 32,311 in 2022 to 62,208 in 2024, the Hands On Atlanta team needed a platform that could scale with them. With the ability to create custom reservations in Golden, staff can manage group registrations and recurring shifts without needing to manually coordinate or follow up. And onboarding new nonprofit partners is as simple as a few clicks, allowing the organization to expand its reach quickly and efficiently.

This operational efficiency has been crucial as Hands On Atlanta deepened its community programming and launched new initiatives, requiring smoother coordination between internal teams and external partners.

Strategic Reporting and Impact Insights

Golden’s robust analytics have become a cornerstone of Hands On Atlanta’s strategic planning and storytelling. The team now tracks volunteer engagement monthly and sets annual benchmarks for growth, benchmarks they’ve consistently surpassed year after year. 

For example:

• 2022: 32,311 volunteers | 110,294 hours
  
• 2023: 42,111 volunteers | 138,714 hours
  
• 2024: 62,208 volunteers | 209,056 hours
  
• 2025: On track for 75,000 volunteers | 225,000 hours
  

Through Golden’s export tools, staff can pull real-time data to analyze opportunity capacity, fill rates, and partner activity. They also segment data by cause area—education, food insecurity, environmental stewardship, and urgent needs—aligned with their Impact Teams. This granularity helps assess performance at both the programmatic and organizational level, guiding improvements and demonstrating ROI to stakeholders.

Signature initiatives like Hands On Hunger and Discovery also benefit from targeted impact data, allowing the team to refine their approach and deepen their effect in the community.

Best Practices for Organizations Considering Golden

Hands On Atlanta’s success didn’t come from technology alone; it came from a thoughtful implementation strategy that other organizations can learn from. 

Their team recommends hosting monthly training sessions for nonprofit partners to ensure they’re maximizing the platform’s features. They also created a Knowledge Center using Tawk, giving volunteers 24/7 access to FAQs, tutorials, and support, empowering them to navigate opportunities independently and reducing strain on staff.

With Golden, Hands On Atlanta has created a scalable, data-informed, and community-driven volunteer management program, setting a powerful example of what’s possible when the right platform meets the right strategy.

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With a legacy stretching back to 1892, Connie Maxwell Children’s Ministries has long served as a beacon of hope for vulnerable children and families across South Carolina. Operating across four campuses—and planning a fifth—the organization offers a continuum of care through Residential, Crisis, Family, and Foster Care programs.

As their mission grew, so did the complexity of managing a widespread network of volunteers with diverse skills and backgrounds. All volunteer data was stored in Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge NXT, their donor CRM—but the organization lacked a streamlined way to connect volunteer activity to donor engagement.

Manual data entry, inconsistent record-keeping, and time-consuming reporting processes made it difficult for staff to activate their full supporter base. Connie Maxwell needed a modern volunteer management solution that could work hand-in-hand with their CRM—enabling a seamless volunteer-to-donor journey while supporting their day-to-day operational needs.

How We Helped

Seamless Integration with Raiser’s Edge NXT

Golden’s real-time, bidirectional integration with Raiser’s Edge NXT allowed Connie Maxwell to eliminate manual data entry and reduce human error. Volunteer records automatically synced with their CRM, giving the team instant access to accurate, up-to-date information they could act on.

This wasn’t just a tech upgrade—it was a transformation in how the organization viewed and engaged its supporters.

Stronger Engagement Through Better Data

With Golden in place, Connie Maxwell added 1,060 new constituents to its CRM and updated volunteer participation records for more than 350 existing constituents. These clean, complete profiles allowed the team to build stronger, more strategic relationships—turning engaged volunteers into passionate donors.

Faster, Smarter Operations

What once took hours now takes minutes. With Golden, staff can quickly pull up volunteer data by date, location, and event. This streamlined reporting capability improved internal decision-making and freed up time for more mission-critical work.

Massive Boost in Participation

Thanks to Golden’s user-friendly platform and mobile-friendly experience, Connie Maxwell saw 2,200+ volunteer event participations, deepening community engagement and support for their programs.

White-Glove Support for Lasting Success

Golden’s dedicated developer support and test environment ensured a smooth integration process. Any implementation roadblocks were quickly resolved, allowing the team to fully adopt the system with confidence and clarity.

The Result: A Unified Mission Powered by People

With Golden, Connie Maxwell Children’s Ministries closed the gap between volunteer and donor engagement—turning two separate strategies into one cohesive community-building engine.

By aligning their volunteer activities with fundraising efforts and embracing automation, the team is now better equipped to serve the children and families who depend on them—today and for generations to come.

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The Challenge

United Way of Salt Lake, one of the largest and most dynamic chapters in the United Way network, plays a critical role in coordinating volunteers and donors across more than 21 impactful programs. But as their programs expanded and their community partnerships deepened, the cracks in their legacy volunteer management systems began to show.

Relying on outdated volunteer modules meant tedious manual tracking, inconsistent data across systems, and limited visibility into how volunteers were contributing over time—especially when it came to re-engaging them. Their team was spending countless hours trying to make sense of disconnected data in spreadsheets, rather than focusing on what mattered: building relationships with the people who power their mission.

At the same time, United Way had recently invested in Salesforce as their donor CRM. This introduced a new, non-negotiable requirement: any volunteer platform they adopted had to natively integrate with Salesforce and be implemented quickly—without disrupting operations or losing valuable historical data.

They needed more than a tool. They needed a partner to help them modernize their volunteer engagement strategy, align it with their development efforts, and scale for the future.

How Golden Helped

Seamless Salesforce Integration

Golden’s native, bi-directional integration with Salesforce meant United Way could sync volunteer data in real time, achieving 100% consistency across platforms. This empowered their development team to clearly see the connection between volunteer engagement and donor potential. With this insight, they could launch targeted fundraising efforts, personalized to individuals who had already shown a commitment through service.

Branded Experience and Mobile Convenience

Golden provided a fully branded volunteer portal and communications suite, giving United Way a polished, consistent presence across all touchpoints. Volunteers could easily sign up, check in, and log hours—right from their phones. Using Golden’s location-based mobile app, United Way was able to automatically track volunteer attendance and service hours, eliminating the need for manual entry and cumbersome spreadsheets.

Real-Time Impact and Time Savings

With automated hour tracking and real-time dashboards, staff no longer had to spend a full day each week compiling reports. That time was reinvested in cultivating deeper relationships with their volunteers—many of whom are now being engaged in new ways, including as donors.

The Result: A Unified, Scalable Volunteer Program

Thanks to Golden, United Way of Salt Lake transformed its volunteer program into a streamlined, data-informed engine for community engagement and donor growth. By breaking down the silos between volunteerism and fundraising, they’ve unlocked a new level of impact—backed by real-time insights and powered by a better volunteer experience.

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