How Access to Data Can Improve Community Service Programs

Community service continues to be incredibly powerful for students and communities. Students who participate in community service programs are 22% more likely to graduate college and 25% of students return to their communities after having engaged in service.

Community service programs can become more powerful. Currently, 93% of programs are still tracked with paper and pencil or spreadsheets, making it difficult for students to find opportunities. With pencil and paper, there is a significant amount of time and expense for counselors. This process is also error prone which can cause friction between students, parents and administrators. And typically the data is only tracked and aggregated when a counselor or club sponsor has the time. As a result, data is often missing, late and unable to be accessed and quantified until the end of the semester or end of the year. So the data itself is of little value to prevent problems as they are occurring. And in many cases it is very difficult to use that data to celebrate the success of the programs with a larger community.

A cloud-based software immediately eliminates these issues because it tracks, logs and reports data in multiple ways.  The rest of this article will explain the wins frontline staff have experienced with greater visibility and access to programs.

Data Helps Schools and Leaders to Improve Programs

With access to dashboards and reporting, administrators and school districts can see threads and themes of what students value when they volunteer. Data helps improve programs by letting staff focus on underperforming areas. The software also provides greater access by giving students more community service opportunities.  The end result is that students explore the path is most meaningful for them.

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Data Provides Transparency for Easier Management

Live data capabilities provide more transparency. As an assistant superintendent or school counselor, it is extremely critical to have the live data to see exactly where students are most active, what opportunities are driving the most engagement, what they have participated in or if they have not participated in any opportunities. The software allows administrators to have serious conversations with parents, students, and school board members about what the students are doing, what they plan to do in the future and what the students are lacking in terms of community service requirements. The live data really tells the story of how schools and school districts are working toward goals and total number of community service hours.

Data Increases Accountability

One of the things that is really unique to Transeo is that the software allows assistant superintendents to hold all stakeholders accountable throughout a district. Administrators will ALWAYS be able to see where their students are hitting goals. More importantly they can also see where students are falling short. Data that is accessible allows the counselor to hold themselves and students accountable. This accountability also moves upstream. From the top down, school districts are able to hold counselors, student community service departments, clubs, sports and activity sponsors responsible OR they can also celebrate those who have done an amazing job in their community, especially if they weren’t celebrated in the past.

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Data Helps to Increase Awareness

Now that this type of data is at the fingertips of school district administrators, they can now share this information in board meetings. They can celebrate groups like the National Honor Society. Or, they can celebrate a student who meets their 150 hour requirement. At the highest level, this tool can also be a celebratory piece to produce hard numbers for the news media or to help a school’s brand within the community. And then on the front lines, the live data will help administrators or counselors to recognize those efforts by students who may have previously missed their goal because it was all done on paper previously. This builds even more momentum for the overall success of your program.

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About Transeo Serve

Transeo Serve is an affordable, cloud-based and mobile-first software that allows you to track, manage and report on your community service program.

The team at Transeo Serve believes in a future where students are defined through determination, resilience and hard work. The future starts with the student and tools like the Transeo Serve Community Service Tracking Software. This software can help track and manage students community service experiences to help them unlock their potential and transform their community.

Transeo Serve provides multiple advantages to any district and/or specific school’s community service program by:

• Helping to move districts from a focus on managing an informal paper system to focusing on students and quality experiences.
• Shifting the focus of your counselors and students from spending countless hours producing individualized reports to instantly producing customized reports for different students, clubs and sponsors across your organization.
• Taking your community from very little awareness of what community service means to a high level of student excitement and understanding of community service goals and the impact on the community.
• Finally we can move from limited information on the economic impact of the service your students perform to a clear statement on the value of your community service program.

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