Apparo Tech Therapy supports nonprofit’s ability to reach more pregnant mothers with substance abuse disorders, helping ensure more safe, healthy and happy families
The Suda Institute establishes collaborative partnerships with healthcare providers, social support and community organizations to provide critical support needed to ensure the health, safety, well-being, and recovery of pregnant mothers with substance abuse disorders, their infants, and their families.
Seeking to grow their reach beyond Cabarrus County, Suda Institute leadership reached out to Apparo for support in improving their nonprofit technology infrastructure. Through Apparo Tech Therapy program, Jerri Grant (Apparo Tech Therapist) conducted an assessment of their current infrastructure and prioritized recommendations for improvement. She also connected them to skilled volunteer Mohit Das of Lowe’s to help implement some of the highest priority recommendations.
After the work was complete, we spoke with Gina Hofert, CEO, to learn about the significance of this work and the anticipated impact. She explains, “We are a new nonprofit and came to Apparo with no infrastructure in place. We knew we were going to get funding from the state and needed to have that infrastructure in place in order to receive the funding, but to build the infrastructure, it takes money. How do you build the infrastructure to get funding if you don’t have funding? We needed to build the technology infrastructure to do our work and no one on our team has an IT background.
“I think that people often forget the needs of building infrastructure for nonprofits. They focus on the delivery of the services being what’s important and forget that in order to be able to deliver services, you have to build an infrastructure first.
“Apparo did an assessment to give us a big picture of our technology needs. It helped us understand how to get started and the services that were available. It was very helpful. Jerri was patient, timely, and responsive to our needs. She’s a mastermind with logistics and told us about resources we didn’t know existed. As a nonprofit with limited time, her follow through and reminders were very appreciated.”
Volunteer Mohit Das then supported The Suda Institute in a top priority recommendation: a transition to Microsoft 365, including data transfer and team training. The benefits of this transition include:
- Cost savings of introduction to free Microsoft account
- Increased data security
- Time savings of approximately 30 hours of time a week that was spent searching and waiting for files/information across their team of six
- Improved internal teamwork/collaboration and efficiency through ability to assign tasks and work in virtual teams
- Improved efficiency coordinating with key external service providers
As a result of this nonprofit infrastructure improvement, they are able to deepen their ability to serve and are well-positioned to triple their reach as they expand into new counties.
In closing Gina shares, “Working with Mohit has been amazing for all of our staff. He is one of the most patient, calming IT people I have worked with yet. He is so gracious with his time and so kind. Another thing we really love is that Apparo connected us to someone we could trust. He was qualified and he came vetted.
“Getting our work done now is so much better. We went from overwhelmed and on the verge of tears, wanting to tear up our computers to proficient, comfortable, and confident.”
