As a long-time board member and volunteer, I'm familiar with the rewards and challenges of nonprofits. In addition to your fiduciary and fundraising responsibilities, you would like to be able to use your expertise to help the organization and its professional staff. To do this effectively, you need timely information. Unfortunately, there are seldom enough staff resources available to gather, analyze, and distribute the necessary information.
A professional information management system is needed to accomplish these goals, and I believe that technology has finally caught up with the needs of nonprofit organizations. The previously overwhelming and costly task of installing and maintaining your own system can now be eliminated using Central-360. With our system, everything you need is available from work or from home, using any computer with a browser and an internet connection. We host your organization's application so you can be productive right from the start.
I'm also a big fan of volunteering, so volunteer management is an integral part of Central-360. It's important to recognize that volunteers are more than good-hearted helpers. In most organizations, they are a strategic part of the team. I think of volunteers as staff who pay you to work. In addition to appreciation, they need to be managed and their efforts need to be tracked. In Central-360, volunteer hours are easily tracked right along with staff time, allowing you to gauge how your organization is doing with this key metric.
In recognition of the important role the board plays in a nonprofit organization, I am including a free Board Support module with every version of Central-360. This module allows selected board members and committee chairs read-only access to all names and contact information. And, each board member can create their own lists of people, such as committees, special volunteers, board recruiting prospects, or grouping that would be helpful. Working with your own lists, you can use the Office Automation tools in Central-360 to print labels, contact reports, group emails, and extracts.
We would also like to develop an informal support structure for board members using Central-360 in their organization. We've found that peer-to-peer communication is a great way to share ideas and develop new approaches to systems and management techniques. Send us your contact information and we'll keep you posted on new developments.
Michael Palladino
President
Central-360, Inc.
P.S. I'm always interested in hearing from fellow board members. If you have any questions or suggestion, you can reach me directly at mpal@central-360.com or 415.759.9125.