Street Appeals

The challenge

Street appeals are high-stakes, time-pressured operations. A national charity might need to fill 1,200+ collection sites across a single day, each requiring multiple volunteer shifts. The logistics are brutal:

• Thousands of volunteers need to sign up, pick a site, and confirm their shift — often weeks in advance
• Regional coordinators manage their own areas but need visibility into the national picture
• Coverage gaps are invisible until it's too late — you find out on the morning of the appeal that three sites have no one
• Communication is a nightmare of spreadsheets, email chains, and manual follow-ups
• Returning volunteers from previous years need to be re-engaged without starting from scratch
• Corporate groups adopt sites and need reservations managed separately
• Day-of chaos — no-shows, walk-ins, weather changes — needs tools that work on a phone in the field

Most charities manage this with spreadsheets, shared drives, and sheer willpower. It works until it doesn't — and when it doesn't, it's collection day.

How PurposeTech Mobilise solves it

Branded volunteer signup

Each campaign gets its own white-labelled site where volunteers browse available sites, pick their preferred location and shift, and sign up in under two minutes. No account creation required — just name, email, and they're in.

Volunteers can:

• Search by suburb or area — find a site near them without scrolling through hundreds of options
• See real-time availability — full shifts show as unavailable, keeping expectations clear
• Join a waitlist — if their preferred site is full, they can queue up for cancellations
• Invite friends — share a referral link and see who's signed up through them

Regional coordination at scale

The geographic hierarchy — Region → Area → Site — is designed for street appeals:

Delegate management to regional and area coordinators, each managing 10–40 sites:

• Area coordinators see only their sites — focused, not overwhelmed
• They can add walk-ins, move volunteers, and reserve shifts for corporates — all from the roster on their phone
• They export a PDF before heading out, so they have a printed backup when phone reception drops
• Admins see everything via the At-a-Glance view — one table showing all sites, all shifts, all volunteers

Real-time reporting and coverage tracking

The reports dashboard gives you a national view with drill-down by region and area. You can see at any point:

• Which areas are at 100% coverage and which are below target
• Where the gaps are — specific shifts at specific sites that need filling
• Registration trends — are signups accelerating or plateauing?
• Referral effectiveness — how many volunteers came through word-of-mouth

Shift management across hundreds of sites

Create shifts in bulk using linked area groups (glossary) — set up the morning/afternoon pattern once and apply it to all 500 sites. Then use the admin shifts table to monitor the whole campaign:

Adopt-a-Site for corporate groups

When a business wants to "adopt" a collection site and provide their own volunteers, coordinators use the Adopt-a-Site (glossary) feature:

1. Enable the toggle on the roster
2. Select the empty slots across the site's shifts
3. Enter the corporate contact's details
4. The shifts are held for the organisation

The corporate contact then coordinates their own team to fill those slots.

Salesforce bi-directional sync

For organisations with Salesforce as their CRM, PurposeTech Mobilise provides a bi-directional sync that keeps volunteer data flowing in both directions:

• To Salesforce — new registrations, shift confirmations, attendance data, and volunteer hours sync automatically
• From Salesforce — contact updates, custom field changes, and campaign assignments flow back to PurposeTech
• Configurable sync rules — control which fields sync and in which direction via the SyncConfig model
• Conflict resolution — when data changes on both sides, configurable rules determine which source wins

This eliminates the manual export-import cycle that most organisations rely on after each appeal.

Background job processing

Behind the scenes, PurposeTech Mobilise uses background job processing (powered by Trigger.dev) to handle time-intensive operations without blocking the user interface:

• Bulk email sends — campaign-wide communications processed in the background
• CSV imports — large volunteer imports processed asynchronously with progress tracking
• Salesforce sync — data synchronisation runs on a schedule or on-demand
• Report generation — complex reports compiled in the background, ready when you need them

AI-assisted features

PurposeTech is progressively integrating AI to reduce admin workload:

• Smart gap detection — identify coverage patterns and suggest targeted outreach
• Email content suggestions — generate email copy tailored to your campaign context
• Registration trend analysis — surface insights about signup patterns and predict final coverage

Automated communications

PurposeTech Mobilise sends the right email at the right time — from welcome messages and shift confirmations to day-before reminders and shift-specific instructions (e.g., "collect your bucket from the coordinator"). No manual email blasts needed.

Returning volunteer recognition

Volunteers who participated in previous campaigns are already in the system. For next year:

• Import last year's volunteer list via CSV
• They're matched by email — no duplicates
• Their contact details, area preferences, and history carry over
• Re-engagement takes minutes, not weeks

Operational timeline

Proven at scale

PurposeTech Mobilise has powered street appeals at national scale:

• 8,000+ volunteers per year across 1,000+ collection sites for major NZ charities
• Multi-year programmes — organisations running 3–5+ consecutive annual appeals
• Cross-Tasman reach — charities across New Zealand and Australia

Get started

Ready to run your street appeal on PurposeTech Mobilise? Get in touch to see a demo tailored to your campaign, or explore the Quick Start Guide to understand the setup process.