HelpStories

My grandmother loves to bake but had nobody to bake for. After posting a HelpOffer on HelpGoat, she now earns points for sharing her baked goods around the neigborhood. She uses her points to get help with yardwork and things around the house. She now feels more connected with her neighbors and has made new friends.

My son has an after school club every Tuesday so he can’t take the bus and I have to drive up to school to get him. I posted to the parent HelpGroup for my son’s school that I am happy to give 3 other kids rides home. I see other people posting the same thing. I used to see a bunch of cars picking up single kids in the pick up line, but now I see more carpooling and the pick up line is much less crowded!

I earned points by helping my neighbor hang a flat screen TV on the wall and used my points to have a coworker dog sit for me for a night.

I am a single mom of 3 young kids and work full time. I have a great support network of friends that would always say, “let me know if you need help with anything “, but I would rarely ask for help. We recently heard about HelpGoat and created a private HelpGroup for our group of friends. Somehow the system makes it easier to ask for help. We have all been posting HelpOffers and HelpRequests like crazy. We help each other with carpool, grocery shopping, watching the kids, cooking and all sorts of things. I feel like it’s brought us all closer, saved us money and made us all more efficient. We used to support one another by drinking wine and listening to each other vent. We still do that, but now we also support one another with action. At first we didn’t understand the points, we just wanted to help each other. But the points are kind of fun and make it easier to ask for things that are more labor/time intensive, because we know the points can be used by our friends to get something in exchange.

We set up a HelpGroup for our church. One thing we use it for is connecting older members with others for rides to services and other community activities. We also connect professional members with college kids to act as mentors.

I really like interior decorating but I wouldn’t want to do it as a business or charge people money. That feels like too much responsibility. I typically just do it for my friends and family, but I think sometimes people are reluctant to ask me to help too often without paying me. They don’t realize that by letting me help them pick out things to buy for their house it is saving me money because otherwise I would be redecorating my own house and buying things I don’t really need! I’ve posted a HelpOffer on HelpGoat and now I earn points, meet new people and help them with their decorating. I’ve used the points to get guitar lessons, get help with transporting things and get help doing random projects around the house.

We just moved to a new town and don’t have family around. This is our first time owning a house and I have a lot of property and gardens. I’m a bit overwhelmed. I got bids to get a service to take care of everything but it was way out of my budget – so I’ve had no choice but to learn how to do things myself. I was watching you tube videos and trying to learn how to do everything, but I started posting on HelpGoat instead. It’s much more fun to meet my neighbors and have them teach me what to do!

Someone recently started a HelpGroup for my coworkers. We help each other with work projects, but also get to know each other outside of work by helping with home projects as well.

A lady on my church HelpGroup posted that she needed someone to watch her two kids one Saturday afternoon while she worked. My husband and I are older and our kids are grown and out of the house. We love kids, but I’ve never thought of babysitting before. I decided to respond to the HelpRequest and the lady accepted my offer. It went really well and we had fun doing it. We’ve ended up babysitting again for this family and a few others on HelpGoat. We use the points to get help with stuff around the house.

I am older and live alone. I like to cook Indian food for myself but am finding it harder to have the energy to do the cooking and cleaning. I wanted to find someone to come in and help me once a week cook food for the freezer. I posted on HelpGoat and now I have various neighbors and friends come to help me. We have fun together and I teach them how to cook Indian food.

I saw a post from a neighbor that she was looking for someone to teach her daughter piano occasionally. It was a family I hadn’t met before but they lived a few doors down. I love playing piano but had never taught piano before. I responded and explained that I was new to teaching but would be willing to give it a try. I ended up really enjoying it and decided to start a second career as a piano teacher. I built up some experience and referrals on HelpGoat and then I ended up starting to work for paying clients.

Since using HelpGoat I feel like I am uncovering hidden talents in all my friends. I think we are all saving money, too. Things we used to pay people to do, we now post to HelpGoat and inevitably somebody in one of my networks responds. It’s also a great way to socialize and meet new people while getting things done.

*these stories are for illustration purposes based on how people tell us they would use HelpGoat