Why did you switch to Link2Feed’s nonprofit case management software?
The overall software functionality of Link2Feed, especially the in-depth reporting tools, were the major factor for us. The software we were using had no reporting feature and each agency had to have their own system. Getting agencies on board was moving so slowly and we couldn’t aggregate data from multiple locations, so vital information like number of households served or number of people on SNAP lived in silos.
When we decided to switch to Link2Feed’s nonprofit case management software we wanted to use it as an opportunity to develop a new intake process with more impactful questions, allowing us to gather more rich and meaningful data to better serve our communities.
How did you convert your agencies?
We chose a couple high, medium and low-capacity agencies to switch over first so they could champion the software across our network. We also rewrote our membership agreement to include the use of an online client data collection tool as mandatory.
Priority for converting our agencies was chosen based on community and zip code. We tried to focus on communities that had the most pantries so we would be able to get more client data into the system – that way if there were shared clients across agencies, there would be less data entry for each organization.
We started by sharing Link2Feed videos and reporting instructions and progressed into class trainings and 1-to-1 meetings to ensure everyone felt comfortable using the software.
We ended up breaking the training into different sessions based on their knowledge of technology. During an early training session, a group was asked to grab their mouse. One of the partners screamed and thought there was actually a mouse in the room. Training based on knowledge really help us speed up the process.
Accelerated nonprofit case management software rollout
We put together a team of AmeriCorp members through a State grant to help onboard pantries and achieve our aggressive rollout strategy.
Having a strict timeline on your conversation is important- decide how long it will take to get each organization up and running and stick to the plan. Even through the Covid-19 pandemic, we tried to do an aggressive timeline to get more partners on Link2Feed’s nonprofit case management software. We let some people opt-out and do paper temporarily if needed but continued to covert organizations that still had the bandwidth to do so.
“We now have 87% of pantry sites and 100% of CACFP/SFSP sites converted to Link2Feed. If we were to start again, we would do more partner trainings to advocate the many advantages of using Link2Feed to push through our goal even faster”. -Amy C. Clancy (Senior Manager of Member Operations) & Jaqi Panizzo (Manager of Food Access)
Photo: Sheldon Heights Food Pantry in Roseland taken by Vashon Jordan Jr. for the Food Depository