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The Power of Many |
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Triumph in a collaborative technology project for a group of organizations
By combining resources and working together, nonprofits are able to achieve a common goal.
By: Anna Mantzaris
You know the old Marvin Gaye Song, "It Takes Two?" Well, how about 10? 20? Or even 50? When a nonprofit needs to create a new technology system, it can be a daunting endeavor. Hiring vendors, training employees, and creating databases are just a few of the often-overwhelming tasks to manage on a new tech project. So what's an organization on the cusp of a shiny, new technological endeavor to do?
Instead of going it alone, nonprofits are banding together and using collaboration as a tool to get the job done. Pooling resources and working together split what once seemed like mountains of work into feasible molehills of tasks.
Angie Garling, child care coordinator for Alameda County, says the organization's planning council -- consisting of 35 people including parents, child care providers, and community representatives -- set out to create a County Centralized Eligibility list (CEL) to help parents.
In the past, low-income parents in need of childcare would have to call 50 agencies and put their name on 50 waiting lists. The council knew there had to be a better and more efficient way. So it commissioned specialized applications service provider Controltec to create a database to make collaboration easier for the 10 childcare organizations involved and help parents by minimizing the time they spend putting their names on waitlists.
Planning the Project
Meetings for the project began back in 1998, five years before the program was actually launched. Since that time, a steering committee (which later became an advisory committee) was established to meet monthly to work out what Garling deems "snags." After raising $150,000, the organizations launched CEL in September 2003, just as kids were enrolling for school.
To raise money, the organization wrote grants and talked to funders directly. In turn, it received $113,000 from the local Proposition 10 Commission and personally spoke with at least two Commissioners about the need for the project.
"We were also lucky to have received an unsolicited call from a local community foundation that had a donor who was looking for something to fund," said Garling. "I immediately mentioned the CEL and they gave us $35,000."
CEL also received free computers from Hewlett-Packard, mostly because the organization was on the radar screen of a Packard program officer who helped engineer the gift.
"A lot of this happened because we applied to the state for funding and were turned down because we weren't far enough along in the process," Garling said. "It helped us turn to other local sources because we had already demonstrated the need."
Now, more than a year into the project, the database holds more than 14,000 records and there are 5,500 children on the list with thousands of parents calling each month to add their names. An undertaking like the CEL project didn't happen overnight, it took time, hard work, and determination.
"You have to have the time commitment behind it," Garling said of the collaborative endeavor, citing many long hours, including one Labor Day weekend in 2002 when Garling and a team of three others spent the holiday reading a batch of proposals for their database developer.
Everything from keeping track of meeting minutes to policy changes needed to be incorporated into business plans. To keep the project on track, Garling said collaborative groups needed a cheerleader to keep things going. "You need that support person to say OK, we're going to make it happen."
Upkeep and Monetary Concerns
Meetings take place every other month and a user group, which meets monthly, was formed. "It's been a way for agencies to share information," says Garling of the program that includes organizations such as non-profit childcare referral and support agency Bananas Inc., and Child Care Links, an agency that links government social service agencies and families.
"I believe [CEL] has made it easier for families to get access to subsidized child care, and it has made it easier for agencies to access families to fill their slots," explained Garling. "There is more of an advantage for families than for agencies, but I believe agencies overall have supported it."
But even with the project's initial success, Garling said there are challenges, including a lack of funding, which has created a pricey membership fee for new organizations. This high fee is a deterrent for groups that want to join. Without additional funding, she said the current project is at risk.
To raise money to keep the project afloat, CEL went back to its original funders and asked for help and Garling said the organization is working to identify other sources of funding. So far, CEL has submitted three grants to technology foundations and is talking to the State Department of Education, the Health and Human Services Committee, and elected officials.
In addition to monetary concerns, Garling said one of the challenges is that not all of the agencies "are on the same page." Agency A may not enter the information that agency B needs and new people may have to be trained, she explained.
But even with current obstacles, Garling is optimistic about collaboration and her advice for those banding together is, "Just keep at it if you really believe in the cause. Don't give up."
Community Foundations Get New Software
With computer software that was more than a decade old, Community Foundations across the United States -- comprised of more than 650 separate Community Foundations serving every geographic region of the country -- banded together to form a 20-person Technology Steering Committee (TSC) to jointly work with current vendors and new vendors to enhance its software capabilities.
Because Foundations act as umbrellas to help individuals, families, and businesses establish charitable funds to which they may contribute a variety of assets, the foundations need an efficient customer relationship management (CRM) system to keep track of important donor information. TSC's plan proposes carefully selected improvements to current systems and development of next-generation core system software.
The group's initiative reflects an important finding of the TSC: improvements to each of the three main components of the Technology Roadmap (core systems, Web presence, and accountability) must be moved forward simultaneously and with equal energy.
"We just needed improvement in lots of areas," said Sid Hartman, Vice President of Finance, and Administration for the Marin Community Foundation and Chair of the TSC.
Because Community Foundations assist families and businesses with their philanthropy, it's crucial that the community foundations have modern systems. Each Community Foundation from Marin to New York could have gone out on its own and contracted for the software upgrades, but that wouldn't have made sense financially.
"It was absolutely more cost effective to do it together," said Hartman. Fundraising in a collaborative way is also easier because vendors want to hear from one voice, according to Hartman. By collaborating, the organizations solicited the top 50 community foundations for funds, raising more than $4 million dollars for the project.
Today, there are 48 participating community foundations and the membership doors to the other 600 foundations will open shortly. The project, which started in January 2001, is now halfway into its plan and Hartman says they have exceeded their fundraising targets and are "right on target with the new software."
So what makes for a successful collaboration? Hartman says it's important to have a broad-based representation. "We did recruit people from all functions within community foundations programs, fund development, finance and administration, communications," he said, adding the importance of good groundwork, including pre-marketing via Web casts and telephone conferences.
With all this in mind, where's a nonprofit to start? "I think everybody has to have a common vision," says Hartman.
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