Volunteer Assisting Key Conservation

Key Conservation is a non-profit organization that empowers anyone to support conservation organizations in real-time through the Key Conservation mobile app. Key Conservation has created three ways in which supporters can take action and help conservationists all over the world. Through the Skilled Impact feature, supporters share their professional expertise with the conservationists who need those skills to take their mission to the next level. The In-Person feature allows supporters to make a difference in their own communities by exploring nearby volunteer opportunities through a geo-based push notification and map-based searches. Finally, the Funding feature enables supporters to meet the financial needs of conservation organizations through transparent and targeted giving. Whichever way support is provided, the receiving conservation organization will send back a photo or video showing exactly how the supporter made a difference.

Building on the success of phase 1 of the project of integrating DynamoDB with ArcGIS Online to view point locations of conservation support opportunities, volunteer Kate Lenzer focused on putting that data to work through ArcGIS Online in phase 2.

First, Kate worked with Key Conservation’s full stack developer to create hosted feature layers and public-facing layer views to support the DynamoDB to ArcGIS Online data pipeline for both development and production environments. These layers served as the foundation for GIS application development. Kate ensured these layers were well documented and created on-brand thumbnail templates.

Figure 1: Sample thumbnails from ArcGIS Online item pages

Second, to support the In-Person feature within the Key Conservation mobile app, Kate used the data to create an application in ArcGIS Experience Builder. The Experience Builder app enables supporters to browse and search for conservationists in need with an intuitive and map-forward design. Once a supporter taps to find their current location, the map automatically filters the project list to show nearby opportunities. Supporters can then learn more about each nearby opportunity or perform a keyword search to narrow down the list of opportunities to show only the ones that fit their skillset or interests.

Figure 2. Sample volunteer opportunity as seen on the ArcGIS Experience Builder map app to support the In-Person feature

Lastly, Kate helped Key Conservation explore a wider range of possibilities for using GIS and ArcGIS Online solutions. For example, a Survey123 form and accompanying map application were created to collect service areas and project boundaries from conservation organizations. While this tool needs further development, its creation has helped Key Conservation continue to envision how GIS can empower supporters and organizations to make a real difference in conservation.

Project completed