Case Study
The Big Event at Virginia Tech
Cutting Volunteer Transport Time in Half for The Big Event
- Less total transport time (4 hrs → 2 hrs)
- ~50%
- Rides completed in one day
- 50
- Student volunteers transported
- ~350
- Volunteer drivers coordinated
- 14
1The Challenge
The Big Event is Virginia Tech's largest one-day community service effort, bringing together 5,000 to 8,000+ students, faculty, and staff each spring to give back to the Blacksburg community. Getting student volunteers to service sites at local homes, and back again once the work was done, was a major logistical challenge. Transportation was coordinated through spreadsheets and in-person direction: organizers told individual drivers which volunteers to take to which address. With no central view of where drivers or volunteers were, every change meant another conversation, and moving volunteers to their sites and back took roughly four hours in total.
2The Solution
DirectDrive Now replaced the spreadsheet with a single coordination platform for the day. A team of five organizers assigned rides digitally, drivers received clear pickup and drop-off details, and everyone could see transport progress in real time instead of relying on word of mouth. With cars and vans carrying 7–10 volunteers per trip, each ride moved an entire work crew at once.
3The Results
• Total transport time, to service sites and back, cut from about 4 hours to about 2 hours (≈50% reduction) • 50 rides completed in a single day • 14 volunteer drivers coordinated by 5 organizers • About 350 student volunteers transported to service sites across Blacksburg In a post-event survey, participants highlighted the in-app map and built-in directions, how quickly ride requests were added to the queue, and having everything they needed in one simple app.