The Call
Dog Aide, a major non-profit in the Detroit area that supports dogs and their owners, wanted to improve their volunteer experience in order to drive more participation from current, lapsed, and new volunteers. Their director of operations reached out to Catapult Insights to help design a research program aimed at identifying and quantifying barriers to volunteering, communication preferences, and interest in potential volunteer engagement activities.
Our Response
A mixed-modal research approach of qualitative interviews combined with a short online survey was deemed the best course of action to answer Dog Aide’s questions while using their limited population of volunteers optimally to collect data. Dog Aide being a non-profit, we had to use the resources readily at hand in the best way possible to ensure a successful research program. Catapult Insights began with a series of online interviews with current, lapsed, and upcoming volunteers to explore the volunteer experience and drivers of participation. The next step was using those insights as the basis of the online survey for verification. Catapult Insights served in a consultative role throughout the project to ensure insights and research direction remained actionable and relevant.
The Celebration
The results were clear and consistent through both phases of the research – volunteers love the Dog Aide organization but wanted to be reached with volunteer opportunities across a variety of communication platforms to prevent any missed opportunities. Volunteers (current, lapsed, and new) also wanted more insight into the organization and most importantly, wanted to know the outcome of their volunteering efforts to feel like they had a direct impact. Showcasing the speed of a non-profit, Dog Aide immediately rolled up their sleeves and began making changes after receiving the research findings to make itself a stronger organization for both its mission and its volunteers.
2026 UPDATE
We checked back in with Dog Aide roughly a year later to see how things were going and to see what actions had been taken by the company based on the volunteer research we partnered on. Dog Aide ended up diversifying their volunteer communication platforms to be closer to their volunteers. Going from one to multiple communication channels meant Dog Aide had to be more organized, but the result was more volunteers helping out, consistently – a verifiable increase in volunteer engagement and retention. Dog Aide also is making a large effort to share the outcome of each volunteer engagement with all of the volunteers to showcase what a group of people can do when they all care about the same thing.
