Youthforce makes Friends of Youth even more impactful

Having been at NPower for nearly six months now, I am proud to call myself a geek. I say that because it is not at all uncommon for me to get excited about the potential of a fancy schmancy new database. In fact, I experienced that excitement just a couple weeks ago when I sat in on a database training with some staff members from Friends of Youth.

Friends of Youth is a nonprofit agency that provides safe places to live and emotional support for youth and young adults in challenging circumstances.  The organization provides services to at-risk youth and homeless young people at 20 sites in 17 cities throughout the Puget Sound area. In 2010, they served over 6,000 youth and their families through their four core programs. You can imagine tracking that many clients would be a difficult task, but accurately reporting on their widespread community impact would be essential to securing the necessary funding to continue to provide critical services. Friends of Youth looked to the power of technology to help them manage their work.

Friends of Youth’s Program Information Manager, Jon Griffus, has been working with NPower contractor Richard Saunders of Gaia ICT for a couple years on the development of an incredible new, fully customized database called Youthforce. Built on the Salesforce platform, Youthforce is a sophisticated case management system that tracks outcomes across the agency, generating reports that detail the incredible impact the organization is making in our community. Because Salesforce is highly customizable, the end result is a system that has layouts specifically designed for each unique program area and views that are personalized based and each individual’s role within the organization. Basically, each employee sees only the information they need to see, allowing them to focus on their specific role in service delivery without being bogged down by a data overload.

As with any new technology tool, this database will take some getting used to. Staff members in the training I attended were engaged, and seemed to believe in the potential of the new system. Of course, they had a lot of questions about how it all worked, and how it would change the way they carried out their day-to-day tasks. As an observer, I was able to objectively look at the new system and get excited about its incredible potential to change the way Friends of Youth does their work, and I knew immediately it would make them an even more effective agency. But, as someone who has had to learn new databases several times in my life, I know that adopting the solution will take time and that, for some, buy-in will not happen overnight.

In the meantime, I offer congratulations to Friends of Youth on their cool new system, and wish them luck learning the ins and outs and getting in the habit of using it. If you want to learn more about Youthforce and how the project came to be, check out our case study.

- Mandi Moshay