CUSTOMER STORY

Nonprofit Organization Expands Aid Through Digital Transformation

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The Customer: BASICS International

BASICS International is a nonprofit organization that provides education, food, and healthcare for children in the community of Chorkor and surrounding impoverished areas, in Ghana, West Africa. Additionally, BASICS International allocates funding to subsidize the income their students’ families lose by the child attending school rather than working, helping the community as a whole rise out of poverty. The nonprofit organization is headquartered in Queens, New York, has an office in Chorkor, and manages over 1,000 volunteers between the two continents.

The Challenge

BASICS International lacked fundamental technology at its office and surrounding area of Chorkor, causing communication challenges with headquarters. Its work was solely paper-based, perpetuating inefficiencies, errors, and manual processes. Since the Chorkor office and headquarters couldn’t communicate about time-sensitive matters, the nonprofit’s efforts weren’t being fully realized.

Delayed Communications Affecting Donations

BASICS generates the bulk of its revenue by sharing personal stories from the students with donors, allowing them to connect emotionally with the cause. To do this, students exchange letters and send photos, report cards, and other achievements to their sponsors. All correspondence is drafted by hand and sent through the postal service often delaying responses. “Sometimes getting snail mail back to the continent takes months,” Patricia Wilkins, Founder and Managing Director, says. “So that created a lack of interest, or maybe a donor not feeling like they’re being acknowledged.”

 

Wilkins noted there is an overwhelming amount of work required to keep the information flowing between a BASICS student and a donor. She went on to say, “There was a huge gap as a small organization that we were just not filling because it requires so much paperwork and steps.”

 

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There was a huge gap as a small organization that we were just not filling because it requires so much paperwork and steps.

—Patricia Wilkins, Founder and Managing Director, BASICS International

 

Wilkins added, “Those steps were always getting delayed, whether it was the child writing the letter, but then it never got mailed, or the report card came in, but again, it was never mailed.”

Because students weren’t able to quickly communicate with donors, BASICS was forced to restructure and shift away from individual donors to focus on generating revenue from corporate sponsorships.

Registering Children for School

Enrolling children in school is one of the most important tasks for volunteers, but it has historically been time-consuming and antiquated. Registration was completed by facilitators going into the communities with only paper and a clipboard as they collected information from multiple families and children. Exhaustive hours were spent often collecting incomplete forms, while documents were commonly misplaced or lost. This required duplicate work or resulted in a lost opportunity for a child altogether.

The Solution

BASICS International needed a solution that streamlined manual processes and eliminated the nonprofit’s stacks of paper. Fortunately, Vasion made the choice easy:

 

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The software is so easy to use, for me and for the team.

—Patricia Wilkins, Founder and Managing Director, BASICS International

Vasion Automate provides workflows Wilkins refers to as a “check system.” Within every workflow, her team must complete each step before moving on to the next, ensuring all tasks are routed correctly for a streamlined system—no paper required!

 

“We sat down with the Vasion team and said, ‘This is what we need. This is what we don’t need,’” Wilkins said, “and the team really listened and gave us what we needed.”

The Results

 

 

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Vasion is a serious game changer.

—Patricia Wilkins, Founder and Managing Director, BASICS International

Student information is stored securely. Files containing photos and sensitive information were previously stored in filing cabinets, where they were often lost and easily accessible. Documents are now stored in the cloud and protected with access controls and audit trails.

 

BASICS has increased the speed, accountability, and tracking of its registration processes. “With this great software,” Wilkins says, “we’ll go into the community with a tablet and collect all the information immediately.” All data collected is then readily accessible to staff from both the Chorkor and New York offices.

 

Because the software simplifies the processes, trained social workers are no longer required to register children. This allows more staff to be allocated to help with registration and greater reach across Chorkor and surrounding areas. BASICS can also track which facilitators are registering children, bringing greater accountability.

 

Communication time between individual donors and students decreased. At the beginning of the school year, a donor now receives a sponsorship card electronically, which summarizes the student they sponsor, including report cards, academic achievements, photos, and where letters can be uploaded. “That’s when the connection starts,” says Wilkins.

 

BASICS eliminated paper-based processes and saved big. By automating the way BASICS International was registering their students, filing their organization’s information, and corresponding with donors, this led to a significant increase in funds no longer being spent on paper-based processes. “If we don’t have to spend money on printers and paper, that’s a win that we can put into programs. That’s more rice that we can buy, more tinned tomatoes, and more bananas,” Wilkins said.

 

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If we don’t have to spend money on printers and paper, that’s a win that we can put into programs. That’s more rice that we can buy, more tinned tomatoes, and more bananas.

—Patricia Wilkins, Founder and Managing Director, BASICS International

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