Wells Fargo volunteers assisted Compassion to Act with nonprofit technology process improvements that are already enhancing their service to survivors of trafficking.
G.A.I.N. – Powered by Lowe’s
Compassion to Act is an organization on a mission to end modern-day slavery. They take a hands-on approach to liberating women by building safe relationships to help women find their way to freedom. The Compassion to Act team has rescue operations, short-term emergency safe houses, and outreaches in areas where women are being exploited. They provide rehabilitation and counseling services, trauma therapy, legal counsel, and a community of trust and healthy relationships at no cost. The organization offers ongoing mentoring, job training, education, and a support network of relationships and services for sustained change.
Apparo’s G.A.I.N. (Growth, Agility, and Innovation for Nonprofits) Grant Program provides nonprofit participants with the tools, training, and other support they need to implement and sustain their technology and process improvements. G.A.I.N. delivers a one-year journey of technology and process improvement to a cohort of nonprofits to help them overcome their technology challenges and amplify their nonprofit impact. The G.A.I.N. program is generously sponsored by Lowe’s.
Compassion to Act leadership needed help to streamline their technology processes and create technology policies, training, and backups. In this phase of their G.A.I.N. journey, Apparo paired the organization with a Wells Fargo skilled volunteer team and a technology mentor who will walk alongside them to document current processes in order to create recommendations for improvement. The team developed a comprehensive technology plan that will include identifying a solution to streamline processes, assess training and technology policy needs, and better protect the organization from potential cyber threats.
Nonprofit Team: Jessica Revels, Jon Beard
G.A.I.N. Mentor: Debbie Shannon
Wells Fargo Volunteer Team: Kumuda Bathina, Saurabh Pandey, Saravanan Sukumar
After the project ended, we met with Jessica Revels of Compassion to Act to learn about the significance of this work and the impact on the organization. She shared, “We had no strategic technology plan to support our growing organization or staff with necessary technical skills and faced a limited budget. We needed a plan to improve our operational efficiencies with software solutions to minimize work and improve our data security, which is especially important given the sensitive nature of our data related to survivors of trafficking.”
They were wasting valuable time and energy due to:
- Lack of staff knowledgeable in addressing technology problems
- Use of multiple systems for communication and data storage
- Manual reporting and data analytics
Nonprofit technology changes have already yielded important benefits, including savings of 1,000+ hours annually, and more are anticipated.
Following recommendations from their technology plan, Compassion to Act has already:
- Hired outsourced IT Director – whose work is saving 10 hours of time a week handling issues that were slowing down Jessica and other staff members
- Streamlined communications with all staff now using Microsoft Teams for chat and meetings, which has simplified onboarding of new staff
- Moved to file storage via OneDrive, which:
- saves an additional 8 hours a week for the management team alone in time in finding documents and data
- reduces risk of lost data
- increases accuracy of case-specific data
- Implemented a VPN on all laptops and new technology policies to ensure security of all private data, especially important for a nonprofit like theirs that can be targeted by traffickers seeking personal information
They also anticipate additional important benefits:
- Reduction in expenses of approximately $200/month by moving to a VOIP phone system
- Time savings and increased fundraising through donor management system which will streamline time spent generating reports and improve ability to analyze data
Importantly, the improvements will lead to increased community awareness, deepened case management and support of more trafficking survivors.
In closing, Jessica shared, “The Wells Fargo team has been phenomenal, as has our project facilitator, Allie Lavallee. I’ve really enjoyed working with our mentor, Debbie Shannon. I am loving participating in G.A.I.N. It’s been eye-opening. I have learned a lot. The tools and resources we’ve received have been fantastic.
“I’ve revisited the Maturity Model technology assessment we conducted at the beginning of our work together and I can already see improvements. Our work has helped streamline our processes, establish standards and make decisions about how we need to work in the future. We are now better positioned to fulfill our plans to open our own safe house and improve our case management. A lot of our clients come from very dangerous situations, and we will be able to do more to rehabilitate them and give them a purpose again. We will have a much better future with this plan in place.”
Wells Fargo volunteers also shared their words of appreciation:
Kumuda Bathina – “This type of work is our day to day. I’m so happy to see it making such a positive impact. Thank you to Apparo for keeping us on track. It was a very good collaboration.”
Saravanan Sukumar – “Apparo supported us every step of the process and made it very smooth for us as volunteers. Thank you for your partnership.”
