An Easier Interface for tracking Volunteers
Literacy Council of Frederick County
The Literacy Council promotes literacy in Frederick County, Maryland, by training tutors to provide free individualized basic reading and writing instruction and conversation skills to non-literate, semi-literate, and non-English-speaking adults. Their system to track and report on volunteers was clunky, out-of-date and expensive. They wanted a system that could be accessed by their members anywhere instead of only in the main office. After modifying two reports from the core system that focused on Activities and Groups, the Literacy Council was able to jettison their proprietary system, save hundreds of dollars of software maintenance, giving them a system that is now easier to use and allows tracking of their volunteers through the training process and finding the best match of tutor to student.
Background
Initially, the group simply wanted to be rid of their proprietary system. It was old, severely lacking in functionality and was expensive to keep due to the software licensing.
Challenges
As with many other non-profits during this time, funding has been extremely tight and office staff were pushed to their limits. At first, the time to train the staff on the new software was difficult to schedule. Once they discovered the ease of use and the new ability to work from anywhere on their information, adoption came quickly.
Solution
We quickly realized that most CRM solutions did not offer the flexibility that was required in this situation. Case Management, Activity Reporting and Event Management addressed all of their needs.
Functionality
Tutor Management with the ability to tie specific students to specific tutors, grouping capability to determine language skills and tutoring capabilities and geographic reporting to match students and tutors who lived relatively close together.
Literacy Council Executive Director, Literacy Council Tutor Training Director, Literacy Council Administrator and an Impari Systems Project Manager
