BIGKID Foundation

Case Study

PRODUCT OVERVIEW

THE CHALLENGE

Qlic met the Big Kid Foundation during Small Charity Week. Following the initial meeting Michael arranged to do a follow up consultation to discuss their IT setup. There were several issues that were impacting on their efficiency.

  • Big Kid Foundation had inherited Apple Macs, however these had not been set up properly and were not suitable for the kind of work the charity was performing
  • They were using Dropbox for file storage, this had not been fully configured and therefore was failing to sync between multiple users’ machines
  • There was no central way of managing their beneficiaries, donors, supporters etc details.
  • To further add to these issues Big Kid Foundation had no formal IT support either internally or externally and most issue were resolved using a Google search

The biggest issue of all is that the charity had no funds to deal with any of the above.

PROJECT SCOPE

Qlic recommended that Big Kid Foundation apply the National Lottery Awards for All funding. The Big Lottery Fund offers grants between ÂŁ300 and ÂŁ10,000 to support charities and not-for-profit who deliver services that matter to people and communities.

The funding can cover:

  • equipment
  • one-off events
  • small capital projects
  • staff costs
  • training costs
  • transport
  • utilities/running costs
  • volunteer expenses.

National Lottery Awards for All has three funding priorities. The funding must also meet at least one of these priorities:

  • bringing people together and building strong relationships in and across communities
  • improving the places and spaces that matter to communities
  • enabling more people to fulfil their potential by working to address issues at the earliest possible stage.

Having reviewed their current IT setup Michael suggested several areas that could be improved if funding was approved. The main recommendation was to move all Big Kids Foundation work and storage to Exchange Online and utilising SharePoint. Within this all team members would be migrated onto Office 365. This would allow syncing of folders and documents between staff members but would also enable easy remote working.  The scope also included 12 months of anti-virus for all their machines, this would help with the upcoming GDPR.

Qlic proposed building Big Kid Foundation a bespoke CRM system that would comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation. The system would be built to specifically meet the needs of the charity. The CRM system would come with 12 months of hosting and maintenance.

Lastly, to ensure that all this new infrastructure went without a hitch Qlic also proosed12 months of unlimited IT support.

THE WORK

Having provided Big Kid Foundation with all the recommendations and details they needed, they went away and put their funding proposal together. Their proposal included:

  • the name of their project
  • when the project will start (which needed to be at least 12 weeks from when they submitted their application)
  • where their project will take place
  • all the costs involved in their project
  • whether their project targets a specific group of people and, if so, who.

Qlic provided support throughout the process and reviewed and edited the final bid in October 2017.

The funding bid was successful and was approved in March 2018. Once the funding had been approved and received Qlic started to implement the proposed work. Chris Thatcher was booked in as the project lead and spent a day on site to migrate the whole team to Office 365, set up their Exchange Server and SharePoint.

A kick off meeting was held to establish all the requirements for their bespoke CRM and work was started. The CRM is due to be completed in August 2018.

IT support started immediately, proving unlimited 24 hours access to the Qlic help desk.

THE RESULTS

One of the main benefits that Big Kid Foundation immediately realised was the ability for all staff members to work remotely using Office 365.

The unlimited IT support ensures continuous efficient working and maintenance of new and existing services.

Anti-virus and Office 365 subscriptions have improved the network security and have helped towards the GDPR requirements.

Once the CRM goes live this will allow Big Kid Foundation to control management of all of their data and provide significantly better reporting for current and future funders not to mention the added security benefits. Looking ahead there is discussion around development of an app utilizing the CRM basis.

TESTIMONIAL

"We met Qlic at a small charity training event, and with their help and support we were able to secure funding for a new cloud solution and CRM system. They have been exceptional in migrating all our files to the new cloud system, and have been on hand to offer tips and advice to make the most of it. We are a very small team, without an IT department, so having Qlic on our side has made a massive difference to the efficiency of our IT systems."
Florence Collenette, Development Officer
BIGKID Foundation

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