What Is Sweat Equity, and Why Track It?
Sweat equity refers to the volunteer hours that future Habitat homeowners, their families, and their supporters contribute as part of the homeownership process. While critically important, many chapters struggle to:
- Link donated hours to the correct homeowner
- Separate sweat equity hours from general volunteer hours
- Pull reports that clearly show who donated what, and when
- Exclude or include sweat equity hours in communications and data
Designate Sweat Equity Participants Through User Groups
VolunteerHub allows you to create custom user groups. For sweat equity, most chapters set up:
- A Future Homeowners group (for internal use in VolunteerHub)
- A Sweat Equity Donors group (for volunteers donating hours to a homeowner)
Volunteers can easily opt into the sweat equity donor group when they create an account, using a simple checkbox.
(Creating a sweat equity user group in VolunteerHub)
(Managing affiliations in VolunteerHub)
Capture Key Information Upfront
Want to know which homeowner a volunteer is supporting? VolunteerHub can collect this info at signup using a customizable form field, such as:
“What is the name of the future homeowner you’re donating hours to?”
This field ensures all volunteer hours are properly attributed and helps simplify reporting later.
If your plan includes Configurable Forms, this question can be added to the sweat equity User Group and be made a required question. If including this question without configurable forms, the question would be on the All Users User Form and likely would not be made required.
(Creating Sweat Equity question in VolunteerHub)
Run Detailed Sweat Equity Reports in Seconds
With VolunteerHub, pulling a sweat equity report is as easy as a few clicks:
- Get a list of all volunteers donating hours and to whom
- View total hours donated, per individual or collectively
- Filter by date, event type, or group
Include or Exclude Sweat Equity as Needed
Because sweat equity participants are tracked in a separate group, it’s easy to:
- Isolate their hours in reporting (either include or exclude within a Custom Report)
- Exclude them from certain communications
- Ensure they only see relevant events (like build days reserved for future homeowners)