Featured Volunteer: Greg Correll

You are reading and seeing this now because of Greg.This month we are featuring our web guru Greg Correll. Although he's not technically a volunteer he is a vital component of our volunteer outreach and management. Greg is also the guy you don't ever see at BfW but you interact with his work every time you visit the website. Greg is with an amazing company called Small Packages, who put together our website and continues to manage it. 

Rather than just take a template and plug Bikes for the World into it, Greg took the time to work with us and manipulated the template, which is now unrecognizable, to work and look like us. We changed the colors, fonts, menus, and positioning- basically made the thing more user friendly. Greg in turn made the whole back end more user friendly for us editing it day to day.

Greg's job didn't end when the website was created. There are constant updates and upgrades that need to be implemented and Greg is on top of those for us. When Yvette hops on and finds one of these 'upgrades' has downgraded the userability she pings Greg and he responds immediately. He doesn't always have an immediate answer, but he's quick to look into it and take the headache away from Bikes for the World. 

As Greg recently said, he's in front of the computer so we don't have to be. Our jobs are defined by many roles and we often aren't in the office or sitting at a desk behind a computer. If there's a glitch in the website, we need it fixed right away. We use the website to accept donations, to advertise our collection events, and to recruit volunteers. It's the drive train of BfW and Greg is the grease that keeps it running smoothly.

You may not even be aware of this but as of February 1st email changed. This is to help keep spam out of your inbox. Unfortunately, it hurts organizations like us that use email as our main way of communicating with our donors and supporters. We need to be in your inbox so you can see all the great work your old bikes are doing.

We put Greg on it and he had us authenticated within minutes so that we could continue communicating with you via email. This is how we let you know about where your bike might be going, when the next bike sale is, or if we need volunteers. It also helps point you to the website for further information. For us the entire process was like another language which could have taken hours to decipher. Instead we sent an email to Greg and went about our usual work with volunteers and bikes. And in no time our website/email was compliant with the new rules. 

It all sort of seems like the magic behind the curtain to us and hopefully to you. We want your online experience with Bikes for the World to be easy and informative. Greg realizes that goal for us. You might forget he's there, but we never do. Every time we sign on the website we know there's a magician with mad skills behind it and we couldn't be more proud to work with him and Small Packages.