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Tech
Tune Up: Optimizing Reaps Reward Now and Prepares for the
Future
TechBridge & The Georgia
Association of Homes and Services for Children
Technology enables nonprofits to
continually improve member communications with tools like e-mail,
e-newsletters, and web sites that provide access to rich
content. While nonprofit organizations tend to be strategic in
their vision, even the most proactive technology adopters have to
balance priorities, and resource constraints often limit their
ability to implement technology in a planned fashion. IT
systems often grow incrementally, based on immediate needs, without
consideration of the system as a whole. Such growth leads to
less efficient technology infrastructures that aren't conducive to
expansion and change. Another challenge is that nonprofits
often lack the expertise to diagnose and resolve underlying system
dificiencies. Tech support, if the organization is lucky
enough to have it, typically has its hands full supporting daily
operations and troubleshooting immediate problems. Nonprofits
in this predicament are discovering that an independent, expert
assessment of their technology can provide a blueprint for system
improvements that enable them to optimize current systems using
existing resources. This, in turn, can pave the way for future
expansion.
Developing a Workable
Plan - A
"No-Brainer"
The Georgia Association of Homes and Services for Children
(GAHSC) is a 75+ member association dedicated to supporting
those who care for children at risk of abuse or neglect. GAHSC
is recognized by many child welfare agencies as their voice for
children at risk and the agencies that provide services to
them
GAHSC has been proactive in pursuing
new technologies to enhance service delivery. The association
was an early adopter of electronic databases, and uses e-mail and
the web extensively to streamline communications. Like many
nonprofits, however, GAHSC's IT system had grown in a piecemeal
fashion. Equipment and software were added as new staff came
on board or as new applications became available. A technology
committee oversaw the evolution of internal systems, but decisions
on how to resolve problems and assess new opportunities were limited
to the committee members' knowledge of available options.
Wrestling with the sense that GAHSC was not realizing the full
potential of its technology investment, the committee elected to
seek a fresh perspective.
"We knew that our technology could be
more efficient and we wanted to be proactive about attacking the
problem, but we weren't sure we knew all of the options," said
Joe Wassell, Deputy Director GAHSC. "After attending a few
TechBridge Technology Education Seminars, it became clear that they
really understood nonprofit technology issues so it was pretty much
a 'no-brainer' that we would tap into them to conduct our systems
assessment."
TechBridge worked with GAHSC to narrow
its technology assessment that could be addressed within GAHSC's
budget and conducted an assessment of GAHSC's base infrastructure,
with specific emphasis on the configuration of its PCs and local
area network. After a half-day immersion session, the
TechBridge team audited the configuration of every PC workstation in
the organization. The team then evaluated the use and setup of
GAHSC's Microsoft Exchange server, which manages e-mail, calendars
and contact lists. TechBridge also conducted an assessment of
GAHSC's referral database, which is used by the association's
clients to access information about at-risk children. Lastly,
TechBridge developed a formal assessment report, outlining specific
system improvements GAHSC needed to make. "The final output,
IT was right on track and now we have a credible external validation
of the recommendations we want to make to our board on a number of
technology issues," said Wassell.
Greater Ability to Focus on the
Future The technology assessment
gave GAHSC a workable plan for optimizing its IT systems. The
agency plans to tackle each of the recommendations as resources
become available. Its long-range vision is to further harness
the web to give members the ability to populate and update databaes
and activate services remotely. Addressing back office
efficiency now paves the way for expansion into these types of web
services. "In the short term, this project may not have a huge
impact on our work, but in the long term, we will be more efficient
as an organization with greater ability to focus on the future,"
Wassell observed.
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