by John Iannelli, ASF Deputy Executive Director
This past season saw the premier of the ASF Community, a complete mobile platform to manage volunteers and participants. This mobile app was a major player in allowing us to conduct programming this winter and comply with COVID-19 operational guidelines.
Additional enhancements to the ASF’s Salesforce platform allowed for a 100% digital lesson reservation process from the initial participant information form, liability waivers and lesson reservations entering directly into the ASF’s database.
Both the ASF Community App and the major enhancements to the ASF’s Salesforce platform not only allowed the ASF to operate this winter safely during the pandemic but it also made the operations much more efficient and cost effective. Hundreds of hours of manual inputting and paper filing were eliminated. We also have developed a system that gives us accurate reports and metrics to help us plan in a much more efficient and cost effective manner.
As a result of the ASF being catapulted into the digital and mobile age, we realized how much more efficient we are able to run our operations using technology. Most importantly, these technology upgrades have greatly improved the ASF experience for both the participant and the volunteer.
We will continue to look to technology to continue to not only enhance our participants and volunteers ASF experience but also to ensure we are operating the most efficiency and cost effective as possible.
The following are new items we are working on over the summer to hopefully launch next fall.
- Initial auto suggestion of lead instructor at time of lesson reservation
- Updating instructor skill classifications within our database to assist in lesson assignments
- Student arrival messaging (when participant arrives at ASF, a text message will be sent to the team of instructors assigned so they know their student has arrived)
- Volunteer daily check in form (replaces daily paper sign in sheet)
- Auto population of volunteers’ work schedule to eliminate manually data entry
We greatly appreciate all our volunteers’ patience and dedication to learning the new ASF Community App. Special thanks to the members of the ASF Volunteer Committee for their lending their vast knowledge and continued support of the development of the ASF Community App.