AIG skilled volunteers teamed with Samaritan’s Feet, giving “gamechanging” support to Samaritan’s Feet, freeing valuable time to to create educational and economic opportunities for children in need.
Samaritan’s Feet serves and inspires hope in children by providing shoes as the foundation to a spiritual and healthy life, resulting in the advancement of education and economic opportunities. Since its founding in 2003, Samaritan’s Feet and its partners have distributed over 8.2 million pairs of shoes in 108 countries and over 440 U.S. cities.
Samaritan’s Feet leadership recognize the need for improving their use of technology towards fulfilling their mission. Apparo matched them with a volunteer team from AIG who conducted a technology assessment of the organization’s current infrastructure, operations, and security as well as technology policies and provided a comprehensive technology plan and roadmap for improvement. AIG also generously sponsored this project. See PDF of Project Snapshot.
As a result of this Community Impact Project, Samaritan’s Feet leadership will have more time to fulfill their mission. This means more shoes, and therefore more educational and economic opportunities, for children around the world.
After the completion of the project, we connected with Angela Carlson, Executive Director of Finance & General Manager, and Tracie Ohonme, Executive Vice President, to learn about the significance and anticipated impact of this project. Tracie explains, “We have a loose IT infrastructure and we want to have the right key, foundational pillars in place as we grow, so that we can do our jobs more effectively.”
Angela adds, “We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We just had a feeling that things were not quite what they needed to be. Without this project, to a large degree, we would be limping along and performing guesswork to improve our situation. AIG confirmed for us that there were pieces missing and great opportunities to improve the way we work. This project gives me the foundation and background to go to our Board and explain that it’s imperative for us to have these recommendations in place to protect our organization and our constituents.”
As a result of this project, Samaritan’s Feet staff will spend less time on manual data processes, reduce their risk and have more time to fulfill their mission.
Samaritan’s Feet will benefit from:
- Technology recommendations and prioritized implementation timelines, including integration of Volunteer Hub with Raiser’s Edge
- Detailed policies to reduce risk of data loss or data breach
- Evaluation matrix to help select new IT support partner
All members of the project team shared appreciation for each other.
Tracie – “We have truly appreciated the opportunity to work with Apparo and the AIG team. It’s been phenomenal. We would not have tackled these issues otherwise. We wouldn’t have had the resources. Connecting with you was key for us. Working with Apparo and its partners is a no-brainer. It’s a gamechanger for us.”
Angela – “The AIG team went far above and beyond my expectations. They were unbelievably thorough around every facet of the entire process, helping us put steps in action.”
Niket Shah (AIG, volunteer) – “I’ve always wanted to contribute my technology skills to help others. This project was a good learning experience for me on being an outside, third party providing recommendation that can sometimes be hard to hear. And it was a great experience overall.”
Rajesh Modugavalasa (AIG, volunteer) – “I’ve worked in technology for a long time, but never had the opportunity to conduct an assessment like this, from end to end. This was a great opportunity for me to understand how a nonprofit like Samaritan’s Feet operates with their smaller budget. When we made recommendations, we had to consider their budget and make sure that the time and money they would invest would generate enough benefit. That was a great learning experience and a good challenge. I really enjoyed working with the Samaritan’s Feet team.”
