Spark Inside is an innovative new charity supporting young people in the criminal justice system to create more meaningful and productive futures through professional life coaching. Our pilot program was met with significant success; an independent evaluation of our one-to-one coaching program with 8 teenage boys leaving prison showed that one year after they had been released, the re-offending rate was 12.5%, compared to the national average of 70%. This year, we expect to offer coaching to 200 young people in prison.
Our infrastructure needs have grown alongside our client numbers. We were fortunate to benefit from the pro bono support of Mark Tompsett, a CiviCRM specialist, for nearly 2 years. He enabled us to develop a secure, customized system to capture necessary client and outcome data. Sadly, Mark passed away unexpectedly in August 2014. We found ourselves with an urgent need to transfer our CRM, which Mark had been hosting.
We attempted to find a CiviCRM expert who was available to help, and when we finally posted to the CiviCRM Forum, Nicolas’s response was immediate. As we did meet the criteria of their Giving Back program, Cividesk supported us through the transfer of our CRM to a new host. This migration ended up being quite complex since, in addition to switching to a new host, we moved CiviCRM from being integrated in Drupal to a WordPress website, and on another domain name. Cividesk performed this migration expertly, timely resolving the many technical bumps along the way such as lack of direct control panel access, the unusual configuration of our new host, or the occasional CiviCRM issue.
“Cividesk communicated clearly, laying down a concise working approach, proactively identifying potential issues and offering advice at every step of the way,” says Steven, web designer for Spark Inside. “Cividesk enthusiastically stepped up to the task,” adds Nicole Berg, Operations Manager for Spark Inside. “We are very thankful for the pro bono time they have contributed, even in their busiest period of the year.”
