Hands On Atlanta

About Hands On Atlanta

Founded in 1989, Hands On Atlanta mobilizes the Atlanta community to tackle the city’s most pressing challenges through volunteer service, with a primary focus on education and youth development. Each year, they connect tens of thousands of volunteers with meaningful opportunities in partnership with over 400 nonprofits and schools throughout Greater Atlanta.

Their mission is simple yet powerful: “We help people do something good.” Whether it’s tutoring a child, revitalizing a neighborhood park, or delivering meals to seniors, Hands On Atlanta believes everyone can be a changemaker.

Challenges

As Hands On Atlanta’s programming expanded and more volunteers engaged with their mission, the limitations of their legacy volunteer management system became increasingly evident. What once may have supported a smaller operation was no longer sustainable for a growing, high-impact organization.

One of the biggest challenges was inefficient coordination. Managing thousands of volunteer schedules, aligning them with nonprofit partner needs, and communicating updates or confirmations required juggling multiple disconnected tools. This created a cumbersome, time-consuming process for staff, leaving little room for strategic work or program innovation.

The system also lacked robust data and insights, making it difficult to accurately track and report on volunteer hours, participation rates, and overall impact. Staff members were forced to rely on manual processes to extract information for stakeholders, slowing down reporting and reducing the team’s ability to make data-informed decisions.

As volunteerism grew year over year, the platform presented scalability issues. It simply couldn’t keep up with the volume of users, events, and partner organizations, leading to bottlenecks and frustrations for everyone involved.

Lastly, the legacy system created a poor user experience for both volunteers and nonprofit partners. Navigation was often unintuitive, and finding or signing up for the right opportunities could be frustrating. These friction points posed a barrier to deeper community engagement and long-term retention.

How Golden Helped

Simplified Volunteer Registration and Engagement

Since launching Golden in late 2021, Hands On Atlanta has seen dramatic growth in volunteer participation and retention, an outcome directly tied to Golden’s user-friendly experience. 

In 2021, the organization engaged 24,737 volunteers who contributed 76,619 hours of service. Just three years later, they’re on track in 2025 to engage over 75,000 volunteers and deliver 225,000 service hours—a more than 3x increase in both metrics since adopting Golden.

Golden’s streamlined registration process makes it easier than ever for people to get involved. Volunteers now only need to provide a few key pieces of information, removing barriers that previously led to drop-off. Once registered, volunteers are automatically added to email lists, enabling consistent engagement and communication over time.

The improved visual design of Golden’s opportunity listings has also had a measurable impact. Events are now easier to browse and more appealing to potential volunteers, encouraging more sign-ups across Hands On Atlanta’s network of programs and nonprofit partners.

Time-Saving Operational Tools

As volunteer numbers surged—from 32,311 in 2022 to 62,208 in 2024, the Hands On Atlanta team needed a platform that could scale with them. With the ability to create custom reservations in Golden, staff can manage group registrations and recurring shifts without needing to manually coordinate or follow up. And onboarding new nonprofit partners is as simple as a few clicks, allowing the organization to expand its reach quickly and efficiently.

This operational efficiency has been crucial as Hands On Atlanta deepened its community programming and launched new initiatives, requiring smoother coordination between internal teams and external partners.

Strategic Reporting and Impact Insights

Golden’s robust analytics have become a cornerstone of Hands On Atlanta’s strategic planning and storytelling. The team now tracks volunteer engagement monthly and sets annual benchmarks for growth, benchmarks they’ve consistently surpassed year after year. 

For example:

• 2022: 32,311 volunteers | 110,294 hours
  
• 2023: 42,111 volunteers | 138,714 hours
  
• 2024: 62,208 volunteers | 209,056 hours
  
• 2025: On track for 75,000 volunteers | 225,000 hours
  

Through Golden’s export tools, staff can pull real-time data to analyze opportunity capacity, fill rates, and partner activity. They also segment data by cause area—education, food insecurity, environmental stewardship, and urgent needs—aligned with their Impact Teams. This granularity helps assess performance at both the programmatic and organizational level, guiding improvements and demonstrating ROI to stakeholders.

Signature initiatives like Hands On Hunger and Discovery also benefit from targeted impact data, allowing the team to refine their approach and deepen their effect in the community.

Best Practices for Organizations Considering Golden

Hands On Atlanta’s success didn’t come from technology alone; it came from a thoughtful implementation strategy that other organizations can learn from. 

Their team recommends hosting monthly training sessions for nonprofit partners to ensure they’re maximizing the platform’s features. They also created a Knowledge Center using Tawk, giving volunteers 24/7 access to FAQs, tutorials, and support, empowering them to navigate opportunities independently and reducing strain on staff.

With Golden, Hands On Atlanta has created a scalable, data-informed, and community-driven volunteer management program, setting a powerful example of what’s possible when the right platform meets the right strategy.