Case Study: Garrison Digital Solutions achieves an 80% cut in volunteer coordination time and boosts volunteer numbers with VolunteerHub

Garrison digital Solutions - Customer Case Study

The National Cherry Festival in Traverse City, Michigan—a large, eight-day event drawing over half a million attendees and requiring some 35,000 volunteer hours annually—was organized by a small team (six staff and four interns) that relied on manual scheduling and faced technology limits (mixed platforms and no robust network). Filling more than 3,000 shift slots once required nearly 1,000 hours and made reporting slow, so organizers asked Garrison Solutions’ Rick Kiehle to find a better volunteer-management system.

They implemented VolunteerHub, a web-based, platform-independent system with real-time updates, automated communications, group management and reporting. The platform cut coordination time by as much as 80%, helped grow volunteers from about 800 to nearly 2,000, improved outreach (a recruitment event invited 700 contacts, drew 500 attendees and produced over 200 same-night sign-ups) and simplified scheduling and hour tracking for staff.

Garrison Digital Solutions

Rick Kiehle

President and CEO