From the Annual Report: The Covid-19 pandemic meant greater need for support for many community organizations, and more students eager to provide it. However, health restrictions due to the pandemic meant there were fewer in-person opportunities to do so. Those factors all required the Ginsberg Center’s Connect2Community team to adapt adapt our tool’s functionality and function and content to provide community support and service opportunities in a time of crisis.
Connect2Community is an online portal that connects University of Michigan students, staff, and faculty to engagement opportunities with non-profits, schools, and other community agencies. In a typical year, the vast majority of these opportunities are for in-person service.
A collaboration with the United Way of Washtenaw County and Eastern Michigan University, Connect2Community required all three partners to create coordinated Covid landing pages on their websites. Those pages became among the top ways users found (and continue to find) Connect2Community.
“There was definitely a big increase in the number of people wanting to help out,” says Sarah Gallagher, Ginsberg’s Connect2Community Student Coordinator. “Students and community members really wanted to be involved in Covid response. Connect2Community views went way up. We saw thousands more views in March and April compared to the previous year.” (The site received 14,867 views across the two months, versus 7,620 last year.)
Connect2Community had to be transformed into a resource for all the urgent needs that the community had while still maintaining a robust database of noncrisis service opportunities. “It was essentially a complete refresh of our site,” Gallagher says. “There was a lot of brainstorming.”
“There was definitely a big increase in the number of people wanting to help out. Students and community members really wanted to be involved in Covid response.”
Sarah Gallagher, Ginsberg Connect2Community Student Coordinator
There was also an uptick in the number of new community partners signing up to post their opportunities. In addition, both new and existing partners turned to Ginsberg for help in thinking differently and creatively about opportunities for virtual volunteers, which was brand new territory for many of them. Resulting opportunities varied from help sewing masks to technical assistance to social media support.
“There’s no question that it was a very fast, very challenging experience to rise to the needs of both students and the community during Covid. It was unlike anything we’d done before,” Gallagher says. “But Connect2Community is about being resourceful in the name of service, so we were well-equipped to pivot the site to quickly serve the unique needs of that moment.”
To read more on the Annual Report, click here.