Conference Plus, Cancer Society team up to develop volunteer portal
Marketwire
SCHAUMBURG — Conference Plus Inc., a subsidiary of Westell Technologies Inc., will collaborate with American Cancer Society California Division Inc. to develop a unique web portal solution designed to educate and empower the ACSCD volunteer staff.
“One of the primary goals of this project was to provide our volunteer staff with easy access to our existing repository of information and tools,” stated Steven Rickards, director, patient support and training, ACSCD.
“Previously, that access was limited to providing only a listing of training opportunities and an online registration function,” he added. “With our new website, we are able to deliver access to a much greater amount of information and tools, increasing awareness and understanding of all aspects of the American Cancer Society, from research to advocacy, while helping us address the silo approach to an individual's experience of the organization.”
Another goal of the new volunteer website was to support independent access and use of training and information in a variety of media platforms, in keeping with the ACSCD philosophy to delivering ongoing adult learning and at the same time enabling more effective use of limited staff resources. The automated setup of secure online member profiles together with built-in reporting capabilities provide a better understanding of the volunteer base and the specific types of trainings and topics that are most frequently accessed.
An important requirement of the new portal was to enable the ACSCD Network Training team to manage and regularly update the new website themselves with an integrated, easy-to-use content management tool.
“Our Network Training team manages and updates the entire site, which is of great value to us because of the need to update content on a monthly basis,” Rickards said.
The new website also includes a prospective volunteer page, where new volunteers can independently review information and access select trainings to make an informed decision about their volunteer role and allowing existing volunteers to explore additional volunteer roles.
“It has been extremely satisfying to work with the ACSCD Training organization to develop a customized solution that accomplishes their goals for delivering improved support and training to their volunteers and staff,” said Dan Papa, senior vice president, sales, ConferencePlus. “This is a great example of how a complete content management solution can be developed to expand and vastly improve upon the traditional basic delivery model for recorded audio and video content and related information. We believe that this type of website portal solution offers benefits for many other types of organizations with similar requirements.”
Conference Plus Inc. provides audio, video, webcasting and web conferencing services, with a focus on providing innovative IP-based collaboration solutions backed by proven technology and exceptional customer service.