Jessica Dabbs, Giving Women member:
My interactive Giving Women challenge

I joined Giving Women because I was looking for an organization where I could use my time to benefit others and to meet people with similar interests.  I have not been disappointed! Since the first event I attended I have met a diverse range of women, each of whom contribute different skills, expertise and experiences. 

At first I found it a bit difficult understanding how I could get involved as a member, but now I love the flexibility of Giving Women which allows me to fit my involvement around working full time. I have attended workshops, talks, the annual conference, monthly lunches and met up with members outside of formal events. 

Last summer I mentioned to Atalanti, the founder of Giving Women, that I had some spare time and would love to get more involved. Atalanti challenged me to find an app to use at the annual Giving Women Conference to make the event paperless and to increase engagement with attendees. I had no experience of working with this type of project, but I can’t say no to a challenge and the opportunity to learn something new! 

Over the summer I researched app providers, compared the different offerings, considered how we could use the app, read articles about the integration of event apps and negotiated a not for profit discount with our chosen service provider. I soon discovered that one of the biggest challenges with event apps is getting people to download the app, so I developed a plan to maximize the take up rate.

With support from volunteers and staff there was a final flurry of activity in the run up to the conference as we personalized our event page, uploaded information about the Conference and the speakers and promoted the app. This was followed by some testing and then anxiously tracking the data to see how many people had downloaded the app.

I was delighted with the success of the app on the day of the Conference! We had a download rate of over 80%, 74 questions posted, over 3,000 independent views and a full activity stream. We received great feedback from both participants and speakers. 

After a preparing a short evaluation report the project was complete. 

I enjoyed the creative aspects of this project and felt a huge sense of achievement from the success of the app. I was grateful for the opportunity to develop new skills, but it also made me reflect on why I enjoyed the project so much. As a result I have developed opportunities in my professional life to take on similar projects to be creative and increase engagement with relevant stakeholders.