Pathfinders Children’s Ministry serves inner-city and at-risk youth in Washoe County by providing hot meals, wholesome recreation, education, homework assistance, and other activities during their Friday program in Sparks, Saturday program in Reno, and other programs. Ren Consulting designed and launched a customized database and SharePoint site for Pathfinders.
Background
With the support of 25 churches, the help of dozens of volunteers, and the use of fourteen 15-passenger vans, Pathfinders picks up over a hundred children each weekend from across the city to provide access to a supportive, fun, and safe environment at their Sparks and Reno locations. With so many moving pieces, organization is essential. Volunteers change regularly; children in foster homes, shelters, and low-income housing move unpredictably; guardian contact info changes often without notice; driving routes and volunteer schedules must therefore change with them. Medical history for children and oftentimes sensitive and personal information regarding family and guardians requires privacy and efficient tracking systems.
Pathfinders had been using Excel spreadsheets to track volunteers. Due to the sensitive nature of some information, some data was managed by the Executive Director, other data was managed by the Volunteer Coordinator, and still more data was managed by the Transportation Director. Much of the data was missing, duplicated, or inconsistent, and all of it was manually tracked with no distribution process to inform other stakeholders, such as class leaders, of changing information.
Objective
Through collaboration with stakeholders, it was determined that Pathfinders needed a cloud-based solution that would provide customized access levels and data that could be manipulated to provide insights. For example, with their old system, the list of children was in alphabetical order of last name, so if a list of all students who attend the Saturday program, or a list of all students who ride on Van 3, or a list of all students who live in the shelter was needed, the volunteer would need to manually search through the list to find the required information. This was inefficient and highly prone to error, so the new system needed to remedy this by providing information that was easy to sort and filter.
Solution
The data was cleaned up, and a SharePoint site was built. Separate lists of data were connected using keys to create an interactive dashboard of information. A list of children was connected to the list of vans and the lists of volunteers. Information could be added, sorted, and edited simply with customized fields and views. SharePoint provided a cloud-based solution, so all users saw the same information, and any edits would not cause confusion. Access levels were customized to suit the organization. Additionally, preset print layouts were designed to create easy-to-print pages for distributing pickup lists for drivers and class lists for teachers.
The new SharePoint site created a tailored, efficient, reliable source of data to keep programs running smoothly for Pathfinders. Per the Executive Director, Chuck Grimm, the assistance “saved so many hours of work and probably some carpal tunnel.” Board Member Dick Link stated that the improvements to the system were “more than helpful and removed a lot of stress.”
Used with permission.
