NobleHour Blog

In celebration of National Volunteer Month, NobleHour is launching a virtual scavenger hunt to inspire participants to serve.  On each day of National Volunteer Week, April 6-12, NobleHour will use Instagram and Twitter to share clues or questions related to volunteering and community engagement. Participants that Tweet the correct answer to @noblehour with the hashtag #NobleNVM will be entered to win daily prizes and the grand prize of an iPad Mini.

In addition to hosting the scavenger hunt, NobleHour will be sharing volunteer tips, exclusive service-learning blog posts, volunteer opportunities, and inspirational service quotes all month long.

“We believe in celebrating service every day, but we get especially excited for National Volunteer Month,” said Keara Ziegerer, NobleHour’s User Engagement Manager.

“The Strides in Service Scavenger Hunt is a fun way we can connect with volunteers, while rewarding them for their commitment to community engagement.”

Members of the NobleHour team will also connect with volunteers at the 2014 National Service-Learning Conference, MONUMENTAL. The conference runs from April 9-12, ending with Global Youth Service Day – the largest service event in the world. 

For more information about the Strides in Service Scavenger Hunt and NobleHour’s National Volunteer Month celebration, visit info.noblehour.com/nvm.  

About NobleHour:

We are a small company with a big mission to provide an online platform that enables and facilitates community engagement. NobleHour is a network of online communities that focuses on community engagement by offering a suite of tools for tracking and measuring service-learning, volunteering, and community service initiatives. Our online communities offer hour tracking, opportunity and event listings, and hour reporting tools that are used by school districts, colleges, universities, non-profits, and businesses throughout the US and most recently Canada. We have an interesting back story: NobleHour was started by a student back in 2005 who was looking for a way to find service opportunities in his area. It grew from a simple online database of service-learning opportunities to what we are today, with over 35,000 active users, over 3,000 organizations, and over 3,000 opportunity listings. Since the day of our official re-launch in January of 2012, our users have tracked close to 3 million service hours, with an economic impact of over $62,000,000

On Sunday, NobleHour awarded three scholarships to students at Guilford County Schools’ annual “Cool to Serve” event. Hundreds of graduates attended the event, which celebrated the class of 2013’s service-learning accomplishments.

Jose Oliva received the NobleHour Platinum Award - $1,000 for having the "Most Impactful Service-Learning Project", Austin Elmore won $500 for the "Best Social/Global Impact Service-Learning Project, and Billy Hawkains won $250 for the Best Community/Civic Engagement Service-Learning Project. 

“...For me, helping people is not about awards, money, hours or anything,” said Oliva in an interview with The News & Record. 

“...When I think about service, I think about people smiling.”

To date, Guilford County students have logged more than 250,000 hours using NobleHour. In addition to the scholarships, students who served more than 225 hours earned a Service-Learning Diploma, and those with more than 100 hours received a Service-Learning Exemplary Award. In order to qualify for recognition, the students’ service must be unpaid, address a community need, and include investigation, preparation and planning, action, reflection, and demonstration components. NobleHour facilitates these requirements through its comprehensive database, hour tracking, and reflection tools.

“By using NobleHour we are able to capture the economic impact our students make within the community.” said Yvonne Foster, Character Development & Service-Learning Coordinator for Guilford County Schools.

The event was put on by the GCS Character Development team, which promotes character education, civic education, and service learning in order to “equip students with the tools and motivation necessary to be the change they wish to see in the world.”

"It is such a heartwarming feeling to see youth involved and for the right reasons!" said Foster.

Image via The News & Record. 

About NobleHour

NobleHour is based in Lakeland, FL and was started by a team of knowledgeable business investors, representing over 70 years of unparalleled entrepreneurial and business experience. They developed SweatMonkey.org in 2005 as an online service learning management platform for students and schools. SweatMonkey was used by countless organizations such as the YMCA, the SPCA, the United Way of North Central Florida, and the University of Florida. SweatMonkey was rebranded and launched in 2012 as NobleHour.com, an engaging online community platform that includes content sharing, a database of volunteer and job opportunities and events, hour tracking tools for tracking community service hours, and community impact measurement tools. NobleHour's mission is to provide an engaging platform to help connect people with their communities to empower civic engagement. For more information visit www.noblehour.com.

On Wednesday, NobleHour will exhibit its software for community engagement at the 2013 Nonprofit Summit, put on by the Nonprofit Center of North Central Florida and the University of Florida Department of Family, Youth & Community Sciences. The summit will take place at Emerson Alumni Hall from 8am-5pm.

 The Nonprofit Summit is the North Central Florida’s largest conference for nonprofit professionals, board members, community leaders and students.  Speakers at the conference include Kari Saratovsky, author of “ Cause for Change: The Why and How of Nonprofit Millennial Engagement”; Angela Garcia, Director of Community Engagement and Service-Learning in the UF Center for Leadership and Service; and Theresa Beachy, Executive Director of Peaceful Paths Domestic Abuse Network, Inc.  Sessions will address a range of topics, such as: nonprofit engagement, communication, cultural diversity, volunteerism, risk management, financial preparation, and student leadership.

 The conference aims to empower nonprofit leaders to “strengthen their organizations through education, collaboration, and innovation.” These goals are assisted with NobleHour’s ability to connect educators, students, and nonprofits together to create a more educated, innovative, and impactful communities.

 Using NobleHour, non-profits can post opportunities, events, news, and resources with a growing network of volunteers. They can also manage their own volunteers, track volunteer hours, and generate comprehensive reports on their community impact.

About Nonprofit Center of North Central Florida
The Nonprofit Center of North Central Florida’s mission is to cultivate support, growth and community awareness for nonprofit organizations in the North Central Florida region. The Nonprofit Center focuses on providing nonprofit organizations with education, resources and advocacy to assist in fulfilling their missions. For more information please visit www.ncncf.org.

About NobleHour
NobleHour is based in Lakeland, FL and was started by a team of knowledgeable business investors, representing over 70 years of unparalleled entrepreneurial and business experience. They developed SweatMonkey.org in 2005 as an online service learning management platform for students and schools. SweatMonkey was used by countless organizations such as the YMCA, the SPCA, the United Way of North Central Florida, and the University of Florida. SweatMonkey was rebranded and launched in 2012 as NobleHour.com, an engaging online community platform that includes content sharing, a database of volunteer and job opportunities and events, hour tracking tools for tracking community service hours, and community impact measurement tools. NobleHour's mission is to provide an engaging platform to help connect people with their communities to empower civic engagement. For more information visit www.noblehour.com.