Executive Summary

The National Conference on Ending Homelessness & Capitol Hill Day partnered with Whova to manage a successful in-person event, achieving incredible levels of engagement and networking interactions. 

The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization committed to eliminating homelessness in the United States. The Alliance’s approach combines research and data analysis to identify effective solutions and provide support to communities for implementation of strategies.

About The National Conference on Ending Homelessness & Capitol Hill Day

The National Conference on Ending Homelessness and Capitol Hill Day convened a diverse array of stakeholders, including service providers, system leaders, advocates, and individuals with lived experience of homelessness. This forum facilitated the exchange of knowledge, discussion of best practices, and exploration of innovative approaches in the field. As part of this event, attendees also participated in an in-person Capitol Hill Day on Wednesday, July 10.

Challenges

Manually syncing the same Agenda information across multiple platforms

Creating an agenda is already difficult work, but having to manually update changes on different platforms every time proves to be a tedious task and can often lead to inconsistencies. The National Conference on Ending Homelessness organizers had their agenda on the Whova app, web app, and website.

Engaging attendees in conversation during the event

The National Conference on Ending Homelessness & Capitol Hill Day event prioritized attendee connection, as their mission relies on building a strong community. They wanted a platform that could allow attendees to mingle on their own while giving organizers a space to prompt discussion. 

Working with customer service

Working with a new event management platform is always daunting, and customer service exists in order to aid in that process. Previously, with other software, The National Conference on Ending Homelessness organizers had not received adequate customer service, with the account manager being unresponsive and did not have a good understanding of how the app worked. 

Navigating an out-of-date software

The platform that The National Conference on Ending Homelessness organizers were previously using had also been outdated, lacking updates on current or trending features, making it difficult to plan past events.

Solutions

Utilizing Agenda Web Integration to embed information into website

With Whova’s Agenda Web Integration, The National Conference on Ending Homelessness organizers only needed to update their agenda information on Whova, and it would sync everywhere, including the Whova web app and event website. The organizer expressed that using Whova’s templates for her Agenda Webpage and the speaker linking system saved her a lot of time and energy.

Organizers utilized the speaker highlights template to embed into their event website. 

Setting up Community Board to engage attendees

The National Conference on Ending Homelessness organizers thoroughly utilized Whova’s Community Board, accumulating 21 announcements and 119 “Ask Organizers Anything” questions. Attendees could also utilize the board to create their own discussions, which generated 150+ topics and 30 exciting meetup opportunities. 

Organizers supported thoughtful discussion through community board topics.

Communicating with Whova’s customer service

To navigate Whova’s many exciting features, the event organizer reached out to our customer service many times. As stated by the organizer, their account manager was “fantastic in… understanding how [the app] worked, giving [them] answers, and if she didn’t have an answer, she got it to us immediately, which was really wonderful.”

Exploring Whova’s up-to-date features and updates

Whova is dedicated to providing our customers with the updated and popular features. Specifically, the National Conference on Ending Homelessness organizers utilized the separate agendas feature to create special agendas for press, who were only allowed to attend certain sessions. They would blackout sessions to emphasize that no media was allowed at those specific sessions.

Conclusion

By utilizing Whova’s comprehensive suite of features, The National Conference on Ending Homelessness & Capitol Hill Day organizers successfully addressed their main challenges to host a highly engaging event. 

The event’s organizer, Teresa Ferrara shared that “overall, people really loved the engagement on the app, and with this conference, we were trying to bring the joy back into the work and bring the joy back into the passion and our mission. Whova played a part in that—being able to just feel the community of these folks who do the work all over the country and really bring them together.”