We live in a marvelous age. Technology can make our lives easier, more connected and faster. Charity work should leverage technology more than ever. We need to start using real world data in our decisions.
Imagine providing services to people who find themselves homeless. Staff would have make pre-printed packets to use for an intake document. We would sit down with them, and take hours to gather the information they have about themselves. Often, that included information such as age, sex, race, and other demographics that are required by grantors. After writing down, or having the person write it down, we could then begin to offer services. We would interview them, find out their needs and try to build a plan for those needs. Often, we would allocate resources such as housing to them, after making sure we had those resources, by calling our shelter staff. As the person goes through the program, we would take detailed hand-written notes, and store those in a folder. If we ever had staff turnover, the new person would read that folder for each person, prior to working with them in-depth. Whole rooms would be dedicated to file storage, and the art of working with those people depended on experience and wisdom gained over time. Gathering the information for a grant report or new submission would take weeks, and the nightmare of being audited on grant services kept people working late to make sure the paper was all gathered together.
Our mission was working. We were getting people on a better path. Now imagine a different, data-driven process.
The person comes in and says they are homeless. Instead of paper intakes, we open on the closest device, computer, phone or tablet. We interview the person, and using quick checkboxes, enter the demographics. When it’s time for their story, we turn on the microphone, and they tell their story, which is transcribed into the intake form. When we submit the form, it uses the data to check resources available and notifies the staff within seconds. Staff assigns the shelter room to the person, and as they begin their journey in the program, notes for that person are entered verbally as well. When there is a new staff person (or grant auditor), they access the electronic information on the device of their choosing, and can see a whole-person perspective of the progress, including timelines, costs associated with that case, and outcomes. The next grant cycle rolls around and we are able to pinpoint the resources we need most, and our grant reports are automatically generated on time.
Our mission is served, and the time it takes to process and allocate resources becomes a non-issue. By using past data for program design, our newer staff can follow the templates generated through data design and collection. And the grantors couldn’t be happier.