Looking to volunteer?

Want to keep track of those hours for school or work?

Are you a nonprofit looking for volunteers?

Jennifer Cunningham founded Voluntimekeeper, an app that addresses all of that and more. (See VoluntimeKeeper.com.)

Cunningham lives in Patchogue. Her son attends Bayport-Blue Point High School.

“He needed to get papers signed for his volunteer hours when he was in eighth grade for the National Honor Society,” she explained of the impetus. “It was 10 hours each year then. Now, he’s in high school and it’s up to 30 hours.”

As with most significant ideas, Cunningham kept musing for an easier way to chronicle volunteer hours. The reality is that students and their parents deal with a lot of paperwork, especially with college applications. And not-for-profits always need volunteers.

How to connect?

On a plane ride from New York to Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 2022, a lightbulb hit, and she sketched out a plan.

“We’re creating a solution where adults and students can find a volunteer activity,” she explained. “They can submit the hours if they did, for example, a trash cleanup, food drive or helped out at an animal shelter.  The goal is to reach all nonprofits and provide a research tool so they can post their event.”

Students can view a digital impact report to track where they volunteered. But not only that. “Some companies give employees time off for volunteer activities, so it can provide service hours, even for municipalities who encourage that.”

It’s $15 to sign up.

The volunteer tech company she founded is Lighthouse Technology Solutions, LLC.

Cunningham, who works for an ad tech company, said she sees her app creation as a humanitarian asset. She’s spent 20 years working in ad tech sales, marketing, and client support solutions. Growing up in Westchester with a Rotarian father, a retired dentist who now teaches at New York University College of Dentistry (Ralph P. Cunningham, DDS Clinical Associate Professor, General Dentistry & Comprehensive Care) and an educator mother, she has traveled extensively via college and work.

“It had an impact on how we were raised,” she said, especially of the Rotary connection. Her mom, a retired professor at Mercy College, still subs in Connecticut high schools.

“They always volunteered at a horse show and hosted exchange students in their home,” she said. “As I got older, I did things on my own. Food drives, food service at the Bowery. Also, I’m a catechist at Our Lady of the Snow in Blue Point.”

Cunningham has already signed up the Patchogue-Medford Library, Patchogue-Medford Youth Services, the Rotary Club of Patchogue and Our Lady of the Snow in Blue Point, she said. The Voluntimekeeper program is planned to roll out this fall.

James Bertsch, administrator for Nassau BOCES, was enthusiastic about Cunningham’s app. 

“I’ll give you a sense of how we (Save the Great South Bay, the Bayport-Blue Point Junior Civic, whatever) access volunteers and document their service.

“I will reach out to whatever teachers, etc., who are in touch with possible student volunteers.  But I need to know who those people are, how to contact them, what organizations they run, etc.  Then, if the advisors support whatever cause I’m seeking volunteers for, the advisor needs to be a dynamic enough advisor to get kids excited enough to show up.  

So, if the kids show up, I can document their volunteering in two ways:  I can give them a pre-printed community letter we developed but fill in the blank parts specific to them (name; time, date, description and location of activity; number of hours), or I can fill out the volunteer sheet they want me to complete,”

The process is similar for adults, he said.

“So why is this app great?” he asked of Voluntimekeeper.  “It gives students (or adult volunteers) direct access to volunteering opportunities and gives volunteer organizations direct access to students.  Plus, for adults or even kids who like to volunteer but who aren’t connected to either a school club or a community club, you now know how and where to volunteer.”