Rallyhood
Community. Collaboration. Events. Member Engagement

Most leaders agree that effective collaboration is more important than ever in today's dynamic business environment. In fact, it is safe to say that a company's very survival may depend on how well it can combine the potential of its people and their ability to share their knowledge with their teammates across departmental, hierarchical, and functional boundaries.

Designed to engage and empower team members to work together, Rallyhood is a community collaboration platform for nonprofits, member organizations, and associations. The company has introduced an innovative solution that eliminates the inefficiencies of fragmented tools to streamline communication, increase productivity, and drive meaningful engagement throughout an organization.

Unlike other community platforms, Rallyhood aggregates customers' ecosystem of groups onto a single platform while giving every group a built-in suite of communication and collaboration tools, as well as the flexibility to personalize their environment without the need for IT or development resources. Everything is searchable and available from anywhere. The solution eliminates siloes to activate multi-directional communication that empowers a more connected and productive member community.

Following is the conversation that CIO Applications had with Rallyhood’s CEO, Patti Rogers, to discuss the company’s all-in-one platform that helps organizational groups to meaningfully engage with their members.

Please elaborate on the trends that will have an impact on the collaboration solution space this year, and how is Rallyhood planning to leverage these trends and evolve?

Without a doubt, the impact of COVID-19 will be the number one influencer in the collaboration segment this year. The restrictions of in-person gatherings and the work-from-home surge have made online collaboration tools a must-have for groups, organizations, and businesses of all sizes and types. No matter what brings a group or an organization together, it’s more critical than ever to be able to engage and be productive online. Rallyhood provides a robust solution that is easy to start, scale, and integrate into other digital properties.

Virtual workspace and online meetings are the new normal. We have launched an integration with Zoom to give our users’ the ability to schedule video conferences and manage online events more seamlessly. We will also be adding other helpful communication features like chat to give our users additional methods to stay connected and engaged, all in one place.

In addition, Rallyhood’s microservices architecture is built to meet the customer’s unique requirements for customizations and/or integrations, which is another prominent trend in the collaboration segment. Rallyhood can easily integrate with tools like Slack, Salesforce, or other digital assets, based on the customer’s need and business case.

Please elaborate on the challenges that CIOs face in the collaboration solution space, and how is Rallyhood effectively addressing these issues?

Every organization implementing collaboration tools faces the challenge of adoption and managing change of behavior. That’s why we continue to invest in improving the client-success processes. The most critical part of successfully building engagement and adoption within and across an organization starts with thoughtful planning. As such, we created a four-phased implementation process that makes onboarding easy and effective for organizations of all sizes.
• Phase 1: Define and Build
• Phase 2: Plan and Promote
• Phase 3: Invite and Reinforce
• Phase 4: Nurture and Grow

Most importantly, we meet regularly with our customers to listen and learn about their strategic goals, organizational challenges and how we can deliver a valuable solution that improves their workflow on a day-to-day basis.

How does Rallyhood bring people and the tools needed to stay organized, together in one place (without noisy ads)?

Our philosophy has always been that the benefits of streamlining communication and centralizing assets shouldn't be limited to co-workers in a business environment.

There are everyday groups, nonprofits, and member-organizations that rely on the effectiveness of members and volunteers to work together to advance their mission. To address this need, we have built the Rallyhood platform to provide these organizations with enterprise-quality collaboration tools that are accessible to their membership and help them build a more connected and effective community. All in an environment that is ad-free.

Rallyhood provides a platform for team communication and collaboration with a large suite of powerful tools all in one place. Some of our most helpful and popular features include the ability to manage a wide range of events (in person and online), process payments, and standardize how members work together and share resources and best practices across the organization’s network. Another feature that our customers love is Rallyhood’s user-friendly customization tools that enables every group to personalize their experience and feature-set, without the need for IT, design or development resources.

For organizations managing a large memberbase, our premium solution includes an engagement analytics dashboard and reporting to help executive leadership gain visibility and insights never before possible with the use of fragmented tools and separate systems. Our best-in-class solution is scalable to support groups and organizations of all sizes.

Please elaborate on a case study where Rallyhood enabled its client to overcome hurdles and attain desired outcomes.

We are excited to have had the opportunity to work closely with the Girl Scouts Council of Nation’s Capital, which is the largest council in the U.S. with almost 90,000 members, for more than five years. Their struggle, before using Rallyhood, was that traditional communication tools (static website, email newsletters, paper handouts) didn’t address their day-to-day, real-time collaboration needs. Important messages and event information were often lost in communication silos or stuck in the black-hole of email. Additionally, their members were using many fragmented tools to self-organize and this lack of standardization for how their groups worked together, resulted in an inefficient and inconsistent experience that created frustration and missed opportunities to keep members engaged and happy.

Rallyhood solved this problem for Girl Scouts of Nation’s Capital, by bringing their membership and staff together on one platform, with all the tools they need to communicate, collaborate, manage events, and collect money—all in one place. By eliminating fragmented tools, streamlining communication, and centralizing where information is shared and stored, Rallyhood easy-to-use platform has dramatically increased productivity and engagement with the council’s hundreds of volunteer groups, who are tasked with advancing the mission to “build up girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.” Members report that Rallyhood has become their go-to application with all the tools they need in one place to work together and stay organized online. They also love that information is searchable and archived, making the transfer of knowledge and best practices between cohorts seamless. Furthermore, council leadership reports that the use of Rallyhood across their council’s ecosystem has helped to increase their effectiveness in reaching and engaging members more consistently, while also building a stronger, more connected Girl Scout community. It’s a great example of how Rallyhood's platform is a force amplifier that helps to drive meaningful impact for a mission-driven organization like Girl Scouts.

What steers Rallyhood ahead of the competition?

Our biggest competitive advantage is our platform and our commitment to proving and improving value for our customer. We have spent years developing a sophisticated, integrated, and manageable platform that most importantly puts the user’s needs first. A key component is that we continuously monitor trends and gather feedback from our users’ to build roadmaps that amplify success and deliver maximum value.

Ultimately, it comes down to understanding the customer journey and delivering solutions that help our clients put their stakeholders first. We see it as a ripple effect of helping people help. When everyone can stay easily engaged and active, it creates a better-shared experience, members stay longer, the mission advances – everyone wins.

Our customer success team is also on point to ensure our customers are armed with the support and training tools they need to build a more connected and productive community. Our mission is to help enable our customer’s mission.

What does the future hold for Rallyhood?

We have been listening and learning in light of new societal realities. The Rallyhood team is working tirelessly to continue to enhance our features and functionality to help keep our communities connected and engaged. We just launched a video conferencing integration with Zoom and are currently working on adding improved chat features. We are also expanding our enterprise tools to improve workflow associated with managing member engagement and expanding integrations with other apps to increase productivity.

The genesis for Rallyhood was to build a platform that made it easy for people to work together and take action to support a common cause. And we continue to strive to be a force amplifier for purpose-driven groups coming together to do good in their communities, in both big and small ways. While our team and the platform continues to expand and evolve, our rally cry remains the same—Together, we can do great things!.