Why Catchafire is Our Go-To Platform for Nonprofit Capacity Building
At Robins Foundation, we believe that capacity building support is crucial to the wellbeing and sustainability of nonprofit organizations. That’s why the foundation has provided 160+ local nonprofits- not just our grantees- with free access to Catchafire, a platform that connects nonprofits to over 100,000 skilled volunteers with expertise in marketing and communications, finance and operations, fundraising, professional development, strategic planning, and more. Catchafire is a powerful tool that not only saves local organizations’ money, but produces results that generate meaningful impact. Since the foundation began offering this resource in 2021, Robins-sponsored nonprofits have participated in projects valued at $2.5 million by working with volunteers for over 12,000 hours!
For example, of the Robins-sponsored nonprofits using Catchafire, KR Scholars and Hope for Learning really recognize the power of the platform. Since December 2023, KR Scholars completed 85 projects that were valued at over $370,000, making them the Robins-sponsored nonprofit with the highest Catchafire involvement! Catchafire volunteers predominantly helped them with brand identity construction (logos and graphic design) and amplifying their online presence (social media, video editing, and search engine optimization). Hope For Learning has the second highest Catchafire participation. This organization completed 44 projects valued at $115,000 since September 2021! They used Catchafire volunteers for projects such as presentation preparation, press kits, brochures, videos, an organizational one-pager, and much more.
Not only do local nonprofits love Catchafire, but so do we. Earlier this year, the foundation had the pleasure of hiring Catchafire volunteers for a website usability audit and a data visualization project.
In an effort to strengthen our website usability for our grantees, the foundation sought the guidance of a usability tester. Due to our involvement with Catchafire coupled with the platform’s positive reputation, we knew a skilled volunteer could tackle this project. Within the week after posting our project’s description on Catchafire, eight volunteers applied to work with us. After reviewing the candidates’ resumes and portfolios, we conducted six brief phone interviews and selected Ivana, a UX/UI Designer based in Switzerland. Upon choosing her, Ivana met with us to iron out our project goals and better understand our grantees. During this meeting, Ivana and the team agreed to a three week project timeline that involved weekly touchpoints via Zoom. Throughout the project, Ivana was communicative, detail-oriented, and presented comprehensive website usability recommendations in a timely manner. Her work resulted in over 40 concrete suggestions that will improve accessibility to grant information for our audiences. Overall, Ivana’s work was valued at $5,655! We were so impressed by Ivana’s work, in fact, that we used Catchafire for a second internal project.
We tapped a Catchafire volunteer for some professional learning. Our staff member, Dan Halloran, desired to learn how to better visualize our grantmaking data and communicate the impact of our grants. After posting the project description, we were flooded with almost two dozen volunteers interested in helping! Dan selected a wonderful volunteer, Sarina T., to learn from her many years of experience in the financial industry. We met for three hour-long learning sessions to review all the graphs Sarina put together using Robins Foundation grantmaking data. Dan learned how to build them himself and they discussed what future data Robins Foundation can collect to have even better data visualizations of impact. The project was valued at over $4,000!
Robins Foundation can provide any nonprofit organization in the greater Richmond region with access to Catchafire. To sign up for this invaluable resource, please submit an interest form via our capacity building page. Upon form submission, the foundation staff will contact you within two weeks to discuss steps forward. So, what are you waiting for? Join the 160+ other Robins-sponsored nonprofits benefiting from Catchafire volunteers today!
