2020 in Review: A Year of Ingenious Community Support

SignUpGenius users always show how groups can change the world — and joining together became more challenging and essential than ever in 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic affected our communities, you found ways to support each other safely with creativity and compassion.

People use online sign ups to organize virtual and socially distant events, from online learning and Zoom meetings to volunteer work and meal schedules for neighbors.

More people visited SignUpGenius than ever in 2020, and more people signed up to participate in events.

2020 in Numbers

• More than 146 million people visited SignUpGenius in 2020 (that's equivalent to nearly half of the U.S. population!)
• Average number of participants per sign up increased 23%
• Average slots people signed up for per sign up grew 15%

Bottom line: you've been busy despite of (and in response to) all that happened in our world!

Lumaverse Launch

In June, SignUpGenius partnered to launch Lumaverse Technologies, a platform of leading group management solutions that solve volunteer, member, event and fundraising management challenges.

Towards the end of 2020, Lumaverse was honored as one of the fastest-growing companies in Charlotte by the Charlotte Business Journal. 

Integrations

 We launched integrations to power simpler organizing across platforms.

As people shifted their events online, we introduced a Zoom integration to make it easy to sync sign ups and video conferences.

More than half of sign up locations were Zoom/virtual platforms in 2020:

• 2,529,863 participants signed up for a physical location slot
• 1,410,435 participants signed up for a zoom/virtual location slot

We also introduced integrations with three solutions in our Lumaverse family:

• NonProfitEasy - Volunteer, Member, Donor and Fundraising Management with an intuitive, enterprise, all-in-one CRM.
• Fundly - Crowdfunding with no minimum fees to get started.
• Membership Toolkit - All-in-one PTA/PTO management solution that includes website management, accounting, fundraising and communications.

Read how Bridge the Gap College Prep organized a community food drive with SignUpGenius, Fundly and NonProfitEasy.

COVID-19 Planning Resources

Many favorite events were canceled in 2020, but you still found ways to celebrate each other and support your favorite causes. Our design team created new sign up themes for events such as virtual parent teacher conferences, online gatherings, social justice rallies and COVID-19 related testing and vaccinations.

We continue to add new sign up designs to empower groups organizing during this time, from schools and families to nonprofits and health teams.

Check out some of our most-used designs from 2020:

New SignUpGenius Tools to Power Organizing

SignUpGenius Enterprise

We introduced our Enterprise plan in 2020, offering a suite of features that go beyond our highest-level premium plans — giving you an extra layer of organizing power and customization. It's the ultimate solution for managing large groups of people and events.

Portal Pages and Embed Sign Ups

Enterprise customers can create portal pages, a customized index page that easily directs group members to the right sign ups. Enterprise users can also embed sign ups directly into a website. By pasting an embeddable code snippet into the source code, participants can interact with sign ups right on the site. 

Giving Back

We missed volunteering in the community in 2020, one of our favorite company traditions. When looking for ideas to give back remotely, our Lumaverse team connected with Cardz for Kidz, a nonprofit that delivers inspiring handmade cards to children and seniors around the world.

In October, our team members based across the country created hundreds of cards for this wonderful cause. We also donated $14,320 to Cardz for Kidz, the amount raised from a crowdfunding campaign (organized with Fundly) and a matched donation from Lumaverse. We're excited to continue our support of Cardz for Kidz as a sponsor!

In honor of Giving Tuesday, Lumaverse employees choose a nonprofit to receive a $250 donation from the company as part of our annual giving program. In 2020, Lumaverse donated a total of $14,500 on behalf of our employees to 58 nonprofits in communities across the country, from Charlotte, North Carolina to Orange County, California.

Giveaways

We also hosted contests to empower world-changing groups with cash prizes.

• We awarded $5,000 to Tallahassee Classical School, winner of our back-to-school Genius Tech Giveaway.
• We awarded $500 prizes to three nonprofit winners of our National Volunteer Month Giveaway in April:
  • A Door of Hope Pregnancy Center in Pasadena, California, an organization serving moms who are navigating an unplanned pregnancy.
  • National Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., an organization providing hope for their community.
  • Teen Line, a place where teens can call in to talk through life issues with other teens or safe adults.

In October, we invited people to share how they are signing up to uplift their communities, whether teaching students daily or helping a neighbor shop for groceries. We randomly chose 25 people who submitted their stories to win $100 Visa gift cards.

Here are a few stories about how you are making an impact:

• "My 14-year-old son is using SignUpGenius to organize and run shoe drives, packing and shipping of shoes, building out and painting a shoe collection box for his community. His goal is to help the underprivileged throughout the world by supporting the nonprofit Soles4Souls. He came up with this idea for his Eagle Project and has been actively using SignUpGenius to help him get volunteers and organize his efforts."
• "We use SignUpGenius to organize Zoom calls with diversity leaders that manage employee resources groups - these are the boots on the ground folks that provide the programming, support and workplace advocacy for underrepresented people. Today, we hosted a case study from Cracker Barrel and then have other topics like how to support working parents better, what to do about Black Lives Matter, what to do when employees want to bring religion into the workplace, etc. We provide a forum for wrestling with these tough diversity issues and SignUpGenius helps us make that happen so hundreds of thousands of employees feel safe and a sense of belonging in their jobs."
• "I am an Army veteran and currently work as a pediatric nurse practitioner. This year I have made a lot of efforts to be more involved. Given the pandemic and the effects it has had on many families access to food, I organized a food drive and was able to donate $1100 and 200 lbs. of food to the food bank in addition to routinely donating food that I buy for donation."

Organizing for Good

We love spotlighting how our SignUpGenius users are making a difference in their communities. Here are some of the world-changing groups featured on our blog in 2020:

• Families Forward Charlotte is a Charlotte nonprofit that helps families living in poverty on their journey toward financial stability and economic mobility. When school transitioned to virtual learning last spring, the group created a sign up for volunteers to mail activities directly to the families in their program. With support from the community, 45 kids received games and learning activities in the mail.
• Heart to Heart, an open-choice food pantry in Columbus, Ohio, provides three days of food to clients in need of food assistance. Heart to Heart organizes volunteer shifts, events, and fundraisers with SignUpGenius.
• Summit Marches On, a grassroots organization in Summit, New Jersey, uses SignUpGenius to organize their community efforts in response to COVID-19, from mask assembly to shopping for seniors.

SignUpGenius users continue to uplift communities and fight on the front lines in 2021. Even when we are apart, you show how we can stay connected and make a difference for others.