North Carolina Success Story Caldwell Early College High School
Caldwell Early College High School · Public School
“In our first year with Helper Helper, we’ve hosted 103 service opportunities. Students track their progress toward our service certificate and endorsement, and the photos they share show the difference they’re making.”
Caldwell Early College High School shares the Hudson campus of Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, where its students earn a high school diploma and a college transfer associate degree in five years. Service learning is part of the school’s culture from the first day: freshmen serve in elementary schools, sophomores and juniors explore the service organizations of Caldwell County, and seniors and fifth-year students choose service of their own. Two recognitions mark the way. The Service Learning Certificate takes 125 hours of approved service and the Service Learning Endorsement 250, each at two or more locations in the county, and the endorsement comes with a pink cord at graduation.
Each recognition is a goal in Helper Helper, so every student and every teacher sees the same running total. “Helper Helper’s goal feature makes managing our service certificate and service endorsement easy,” says seminar instructor Larry Minton. “Students can see exactly where they stand, and we can too.” Students request approval, log their hours, and write their reflections in the app, and the photos they attach put faces to the numbers.
How Helper Helper Supports North Carolina Schools
Getting Started
Helper Helper integrates directly with the student information systems (SIS) and single sign-on (SSO) providers your school already uses, including Google for Education, Microsoft, PowerSchool, ClassLink, Canvas, and more. Students sign in with their existing school credentials and rosters sync automatically.
Already tracking hours in spreadsheets, a homegrown database, or another platform? We'll import your existing data into Helper Helper at no additional charge so students don't lose credit for hours they've already completed.
Same-Day Support from Real People
No chatbots or ticket queues. When you need help, you’ll hear back the same day from Krista, Chelsea, or Matt. Our team knows schools and provides guided onboarding and Zoom trainings to get your program up and running.
Simple, Affordable Pricing
Helper Helper starts at $500 per year for up to 200 students and includes everything you need. Additional students cost $2.50 per student per year.
- Hour verification & reporting
- Goal tracking & real-time progress
- Service portfolios for students
- iOS, Android & web apps
Schedule a Demo
Pick a time that works for you. We’ll walk through how Helper Helper can serve your school or district and answer any questions you may have.
HECVAT-assessed, FERPA-compliant, encrypted in-transit and at-rest, hosted on AWS infrastructure.
This designation benefits both parties: for your school or district, it means you can deploy Helper Helper without the administrative burden of collecting individual parent consent for every student — the same way you onboard other essential technology platforms. For Helper Helper, it means we are held to the same strict data-handling standards as your own employees, giving your community confidence that student records are protected by the full weight of federal privacy law.
The FTC provides guidance confirming that schools may consent on behalf of parents in the educational context under COPPA. Please request to see our Notice of Data Practices for Children Under 13 and our Privacy Policy for further details.
The HECVAT was developed by the higher education community (EDUCAUSE) and is widely used by colleges and universities to assess the IT security, data protection, and privacy practices of third-party software vendors before adoption. While originally designed for higher ed, its comprehensive framework is equally valuable for K–12 schools and districts looking for a rigorous, standardized way to evaluate whether a vendor meets their security and compliance requirements.
AWS operates the most widely adopted and trusted cloud infrastructure in the world, with security practices that meet or exceed the requirements of federal agencies, financial institutions, and healthcare providers. Their data centers are protected by 24/7 on-site security, biometric access controls, redundant power and networking, and continuous monitoring.
AWS is independently audited against the most rigorous standards in the industry — including SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, and PCI DSS — and provides industry-leading uptime guarantees backed by a 99.99% service-level agreement. This means your school can count on Helper Helper being available when students and advisors need it.
Administrators can be scoped to specific groups, schools, grade levels, or graduating classes — an NHS advisor sees only their NHS members, a school principal sees only their school, and a district coordinator sees the full district.
Outside community partners receive organization admin roles that let them post their own volunteer opportunities, manage sign-ups, and confirm attendance for events they host, without any visibility into student records, other organizations’ events, or school-internal data.
Helper Helper is fully FERPA-compliant, giving your community confidence that student records are protected by the full weight of federal privacy law. We never sell or share student data.
For North Carolina schools, we sign your district's Student Data Privacy Agreement and comply with FERPA and North Carolina's student online privacy protection law (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 115C-401.2).
North Carolina Schools Using Helper Helper
Gaston Day School · Independent School
Every Upper School student at Gaston Day School serves at least 25 hours a year, at least five of them at the school and five in the wider community, and the hours are verified in Helper Helper.
Service Requirements in North Carolina
North Carolina has no statewide service hour requirement for graduation. The State Board of Education's diploma endorsements (Career, College, College/UNC, NC Academic Scholars, Global Languages, and, since 2024-25, Arts Proficiency and Citizenship Proficiency) are optional, and none of them asks for service hours. Service requirements and recognition are set locally. Caldwell Early College High School awards a Service Learning Certificate at 125 hours and a Service Learning Endorsement at 250, and Gaston Day School asks every Upper School student for 25 hours a year. Districts, charter and independent schools, honor societies, and service clubs set their own.
No requirement at your school?
Helper Helper isn't just for required programs. North Carolina schools also use it for National Honor Society chapters, Key Club, independent school service programs, and other student groups.
One Platform for Every North Carolina Service Program
North Carolina schools recognize service in different ways, and many run more than one program at once. Helper Helper handles all of them in one place:
- Service certificates and endorsements: set a goal for each tier, 125 hours for a certificate and 250 for an endorsement, and know exactly who has earned a cord before graduation
- Independent school hour requirements: give each year its own goal, use custom categories to keep service to the school apart from service in the community, and ask students for reflections on what each experience meant
- Approved organizations: keep your list of approved agencies in the app, and let each community partner confirm the hours served with them
- Key Club, NHS, and student groups: advisors track only their own members on their own team, post projects with sign-ups, and check students in on site with a QR code or validation key
- Photos that tell the story: students attach photos to their hours, so the program has pictures for the yearbook, the school board, and the graduation slideshow
- Records that go with the student: every student leaves with a verified service transcript for college, scholarship, and job applications