Virginia Success Story Virginia Academy
Virginia Academy · Private Christian School
“Helper Helper has significantly simplified our process. Before implementing it fully, tracking hours required manual follow-up and verification. Now, students submit hours directly through the platform, supervisors can verify efficiently, and we can run reports instantly. It has reduced administrative workload while increasing transparency and accuracy across local, church-based, and international service efforts.”
Virginia Academy, in Ashburn, began in 1997 as a ministry of Community Church and now teaches preschool through twelfth grade. Its students serve at three levels: in the surrounding community, alongside the church through outreach partnerships, and abroad on mission trips, including trips to Peru. Together they have logged more than 7,800 hours. The goal, says Upper School Spanish teacher Elizabeth Noriega, was “to deepen student engagement in meaningful service rather than focusing solely on completing required hours,” with better accountability, more accurate tracking, and more structured opportunities.
Helper Helper covers both the tracking and the organizing. Scheduling concession stand workers through it “has been a game changer operationally,” Noriega says: it “centralizes sign-ups, eliminates confusion around availability, and provides built-in accountability since shifts are clearly assigned and documented.” Reflections have mattered most to the students themselves. “Students are more intentional when they know they’ll reflect on their experiences,” she says. “We’ve seen growth in empathy, leadership, and ownership.”
Her advice to other schools: “Start with culture first. Make service part of your school identity, not just a requirement.” Then, she says, “implement systems that remove friction and make participation simple and organized.”
How Helper Helper Supports Virginia 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 Virginia schools, we sign your division's Student Data Privacy Agreement and comply with FERPA and Virginia's student personal information law for school service providers (Va. Code § 22.1-289.01).
Virginia Schools Using Helper Helper
Service Requirements in Virginia
Virginia has no statewide service hour requirement for graduation, but the state rewards service in two ways. The Board of Education's Seal for Excellence in Civics Education goes to graduates who earn a B or higher in Virginia and U.S. history and government, keep good attendance and a clean disciplinary record, and complete 50 hours of voluntary community service or extracurricular activities. Service learning is also one of the state's recognized high-quality work-based learning experiences, which is one of the ways students can meet a graduation requirement (the others are an AP, honors, IB, or dual enrollment course, or a career and technical education credential). Everything else is decided locally, by school divisions, private and faith-based schools, honor societies, and service clubs.
No requirement at your school?
Helper Helper isn't just for required programs. Virginia schools also use it for Christian and Catholic school service programs, National Honor Society chapters, Key Club, and other student groups.
One Platform for Every Virginia Service Program
Virginia schools recognize service in different ways, and many run more than one program at once. Helper Helper handles all of them in one place:
- Civics Seal hours: set a 50-hour goal, see who is on pace, and give each student a verified record when the seal application is due
- Christian and Catholic school service programs: give each grade its own requirement, use custom categories to keep local, church, and mission trip service apart, and ask students for reflections on what each experience meant to them
- School events and volunteer shifts: post concession stand shifts, outreach days, and other events with sign-ups and time slots, so every student knows their shift and you can see who showed up
- NHS, Key Club, and student groups: advisors track only their own members on their own team and check students in on site with a QR code or validation key
- Records that go with the student: every student leaves with a verified service transcript for college, scholarship, and job applications