Let's Twist!

As you've probably heard, we’ve seen a lot of new volunteers since March and the limitations of Google Chat, our old messaging client, have become more apparent. We need a better way. We need to be able to keep all our volunteers and staff members connected in easy to manage groups, with a centralized interface, and easy to use tools.

So say hello to Twist!

Twist is a modern communication tool that provides us with a flexible and easy forum for community discussion. With apps for macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Linux, and the web, our conversations will stay synced across all devices. Visit Twist's download center for details on the different versions available!

The roll-out for this new tool will be gradual, starting with the large Chat hangouts like the Virtual Water Cooler, Literary Salon, Listener Bureau, Training Hangouts, and QA Hangouts. When those groups have changed over, and everyone is comfortably using Twist, we can move Project communication too. Starting with Literature projects, and then Textbooks. We’ll allow for a few months to complete this transition as we all get accustomed to this new tool! Once complete, we’ll have all volunteers working and chatting together in the same teams with the ability to join larger group conversations too!

We added a text Twist Reference Guide to our Resources page and we encourage you to watch this introductory video about Twist!

The link to join Twist is here: https://twist.com/j/2abbc2863c6e85d3502548e77f1f59e0 Please join the conversation!

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We Are Grateful for Your Overwhelming Support

On June 26, 2020 in General by User 2127744

Volunteers! We are grateful and overwhelmed by your tremendous support over these last few months. Through your efforts, we have been able to support more students with more audiobooks than ever before. Here are some numbers to show just how unbelievable you have all been:

This is an image of a chart showing the average number of volunteer applications received before the month of March in 2020 and after after March 2020. Before March, there was an average of 200 volunteer applications. After March, there is an average of 1,012 applications per month.

We have received over 4,000 new volunteer applications since March! To put this in perspective, we typically receive about 200 new volunteer applications each month. We have been averaging 1,012 applications per month since March -- that's 5 times more! See the bar chart on the left.

We have had 340 new volunteers donate service since March -- over 3 times more than over the same period last year (97)! See the bar chart on the right.

We have had 662 total volunteers donate service hours since March -- 58% more than we had over the same period last year (418)!

Volunteers have donated 69,000 hours of service since July 1, 2019, with 43% or 29,490 of these hours donated since March 2020. This is 44% more than we had over the same period last year (418)!

We produced 51% more audiobooks (479) between March and June than we did during the same period last year (317).

As we head into the summer months, we will be focusing heavily on the most important books needed for summer reading, as well as for back to school in the fall.

Also, due to the unprecedented and appreciated influx of prospective volunteers during these last few months, we will be limiting new applications starting in July. This will allow us to catch up on communications to all of our new prospects, as well as continuing to support the onboarding of those that have progressed through training into our audiobook production communities or other new volunteer roles.

Please note, we will not always have consistent and continuous work for all volunteers. Please feel free to check in with your production staff leads when you are looking for work through your usual communication channels. We will also reach out directly when we have a specific project need that we feel is a good fit for your skills and interests.

Thank you again for your amazing work supporting our audiobook solution and for your commitment to our mission to transform the lives of struggling learners.

Tagged With: applications, covid, data, numbers, pandemic, volunteer

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