dsmHack 2019: Final Projects
The 48 hours of our annual hackathon always goes by quickly - but our teams are able to accomplish numerous solutions to help the selected nonprofits succeed in the future. This year, nearly 100 volunteers worked with 11 nonprofits.Here’s what they accomplished:
Adaptive Sports Iowa: A complete overhaul of their website, now through WordPress for easy maintenance by site administrators. The website is now accessible for all users on mobile, tablet and desktop. See it live: www.adaptivesportsiowa.org
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Iowa: A volunteer portal to track potential volunteers (“Bigs”) and their status in the enrollment process as they are matched with Central Iowa youth (“Littles”). The portal puts all forms into an electronic format, for consistent and easy population. It also allows BBBSCI staff and volunteers to see what’s required to be completed, what’s outstanding and allows volunteers to enroll at their leisure. See it live: volunteers.bbbsia.org
Community Support Advocates: Key updates to the Community Support Advocates website including improved navigation, mobile responsiveness, and ADA compliance. Additions were also made to the website including a streamlined events calendar, an artist gallery and a swag store. See it live: www.teamcsa.org
Free Clinics of Iowa: A redesigned website created in Wix. The new solution is easy to update for administrators and is now mobile friendly. See it live: www.fciowa.org
Habitat for Humanity: An online store where volunteers will be able to trade points earned by volunteering for Habitat For Humanity gear. The store uses hours recorded via the SalesForce app to calculate how many “habibucks” each person has. The project team has also improved the existing site’s sign-up pages to make them easier to use and more visually appealing.
Iowa Homeless Youth Centers: Iowa Homeless Youths Centers (IHYC) asked for a means to better track their inventory coming in from donations and going out to youths in need. They were previously keeping of track of inventory with a binder and paper forms. It wasn't often used, was never up to date and inefficient in their busy seasons like winter. To help them get rid of their binder, the hack team focused on building an inventory management system. This system allows IHYC to track what items are in stock, are running low, and what has been distributed to guests. This will assist IHYC in knowing what items are in demand and have a need for donations while making sure items are being fairly distributed. The hack team also provided a documentation page on how to do daily tasks such as checking out items to guests, updating product images and adding product categories.
Iowa Radio Reading Reading Information Service (IRIS): A redesigned, ADA compliant website, as well as an updated database to track volunteers, listeners and donors.
Les Dames d’Escoffier of Des Moines: A new, vibrant website with information for the general public as well as a login for members to receive exclusive content. Features of the site include a list of members, events (with ticketing), news, scholarships and volunteer opportunities. The website was designed in Contentful for ease of use by administrators. See it live: www.lesdamesdsm.org
Make-A-Wish Iowa: A website for the Jolly Holiday Lights fundraiser that enables visitors to receive up-to-date information about the event and learn how they can help sponsor future wishes. See it live: www.jollyholidaylights.org
The United Upper Nile South Sudanese Community of Iowa: Four solutions were implemented to help the organization engage members of their community, accept donations, and educate other members of our community on South Sudanese Culture. These include: an online website rich with cultural experiences and information on crucial services like ESL classes, food pantry hours and calls to actions for volunteers and donors, a PayPal account to accept online donations free of charge, documentation to help push their online presence forward after the hackathon and a dedicated Facebook page for them to administer events, share pictures and videos and spread awareness.
Walnut Creek Watershed Association: Faced with the problem of having all the water data you could imagine, but no way to make that data easy for people to understand, the organization challenged volunteers to create a tool to make water quality visible. The team built backend tools to collect data from various public sources, including spending time Friday working directly with the EPA to troubleshoot access to their water quality data. With the data collected, the team began work on a simple user interface, which will allow people to enter their address and view water quality in their area - be it for drinking, swimming, or fishing. The team plans on continuing work on this project to make the consolidated data accessible to residents of the Walnut Creek Watershed area.