Case Studies

Help One Child was a small organization with some big problems.

The organization was great at its mission: recruiting adoptive parents for foster kids.  But that mission was being hampered by an email system so unreliable that staff sometimes found out that clients and key donors never received their messages.  Some computers couldn't connect to the main printer, the phone system was ancient.  The database couldn't produce reports that foundations were increasingly wanting.

Suman Kammerer, the Executive Director, knew things needed to be fixed.  But she didn't know exactly what was causing those problems and how to fix them.  She had no background in information technology and the terms seemed foreign to her.  Moreover, she imagined the price tag for solutions to be out of reach of her limited budget.

She asked for help from Consulting Within Reach.  Curtis Chang (CWR Lead Consultant) discussed the situation with Susan over multiple face to face meetings and phone coversations -- all before a single cent was charged.  Together, they agreed that an extensive project to fix everything was indeed beyond her current budget.  But what she could immediately afford and what would be very helpful was a thorough audit of the entire IT system that explained to her the real situation. 

CWR led the Help One Child staff team through a process which identified the most pervasive and crippling complaints.  Mark Manley, the CWR IT expert who in his other professional context works as a key expert for Apple, visited the site, collected technical data, and further interviewed the staff.  Over the span of weeks, more information was exchanged via phone calls and email, and more research on various solutions was conducted.

Out of that process, we produced a report that accomplished the following:

• precisely diagnosed the key problems and explained the issues in plain English
• demonstrated how those issues were affecting the bottom line for the organization
• prioritized the issues and and proposed solutions right sized for Help One Child's needs and budget, all with cost estimates for CWR to implement each potential solution
• supplied technical guidance if Susan wanted to use her own staff or volunteers to fix the problems
• framed the report in terms designed to appeal to foundations interested in increasing operational effectiveness

Armed with the report, Susan could make some informed decisions.  She immediately contracted with CWR to implement the fixes in mission critical areas like her email system.  She also is using the report to support her grantwriting to fund the bigger ticket items in CWR's recommendations.

When funding comes in, she says that one of the first emails she'll send is to CWR to set more extensive work in motion.  And we'll have already made sure that the message will get through.