Document Management for Non-Profit

Since its charter in 1963 Child Evangelism Fellowship® of West Virginia Inc. has committed to evangelize boys and girls, disciple them in the Word of God and establish them in a local church for Christian living. They do this through their two core ministries of After School Good News Clubs® and Summer 5-Day Clubs®. Their work throughout West Virginia, positively impacts the state and provides character development and spiritual training for children and their families alike.

For an organization committed to bettering the lives of children, it is extremely important to ensure that all documentation related to those they serve is handled with the utmost care and security. All documentation for their After School Programs, as well as business records such as invoices and financial reports, must be kept indefinitely. As paper records continued to build up, adhering to these storage requirements caused a heavy burden on managing the fine line between security and accessibility.

Before the adoption of Square 9’s award-winning document management solution, the Fellowship stored their documents in file cabinets and drawers, leaving records to be susceptible to loss. Paper files proved to be too much of a risk to the business and the Fellowship recognized that they instead needed a software solution that allowed important files to be scanned and stored safely.

The organization must also ensure that all volunteer paperwork and documentation is captured, stored, and retrieved quickly and easily. Specifically, 1,000 volunteer background checks must be run annually, and confirmed as updated before volunteers are cleared for work. Prior to GlobalSearch, the Fellowship would have to rummage through drawers of paperwork in order to find documentation for a specific volunteer. This paper-based process took over a day to complete, often halting the progress of a new After School Program. Now, employees are able to immediately search, retrieve, and process background checks to ensure volunteers are in fact, able and qualified to work with children. And since the Fellowship scanned all of their documents into Square 9’s GlobalCapture software, the process of transferring paper records into a secure digital repository was seamless. Thanks to GlobalSearch, retrieving these documents takes seconds, streamlining volunteer processing and allowing the Fellowship to set up After School Program in a fraction of the time! Square 9’s solutions have allowed the organization to boost their efficiency with automated document processes.

Child Evangelism Fellowship of West Virginia has saved about a weeks’ worth of man-hours in a months time. That means, in a year, GlobalSearch will have saved about three months worth of work! The time saved with GlobalSearch enables employees to stay focused on tasks that relate to the organization’s mission of helping children.

In addition to time savings, GlobalSearch has also saved space within the Fellowship. Since the implementation of document management software, they’ve removed three four-drawer file cabinets and haven’t had to buy any additional file cabinets in the last four years! GlobalSearch has eliminated the need for paper and allowed the Fellowship to save considerably in storage costs.

Since Child Evangelism Fellowship of West Virginia’s implemented Square 9’s solutions, the organization has seen a tremendous boost in efficiency. And with a trusted software to ensure document security, reduced costs and time savings, the organization can better serve their community with religious support.

For more information on the Child Evangelism Fellowship of West Virginia, please visit https://www.cefonline.com/.

Interview: Lydia Boekell, Volunteer Office Manager & Personnel Director, Child Evangelism Fellowship of West Virginia

Q. What challenges influenced you to look for a document management solution?

Lydia Boekell: There are confidential documents as well as business documents that need to be kept secure and accessible forever, and frankly we were running out of safe and secure storage space. We needed a place to store confidential files, and a place that kept records easily accessible so that we could efficiently find a document as quickly as possible.

Q. How is your company leveraging GlobalSearch and GlobalCapture? How are the solutions being used?

Boekell: We have over 1,000 volunteers that have to have background checks and that information needs to be kept on file forever, along with agendas, minutes and financial reports from seven different chapters. All of these papers need to be accessed easily and quickly. Being able to scan from GlobalCapture to GlobalSearch and catalogue and retrieve documents has saved me hours of time daily.

We do After School Bible Clubs in Public Schools and every year when we start up the clubs again, each volunteer needs to be checked to make sure they’ve had a background check and that it’s up to date. I used to have to go through several drawers to find a volunteer to ensure they were cleared to work. Now, I can pull up GlobalSearch and find the information I need within minutes!

Q. How have your processes changed in each department since implementing GlobalSearch and GlobalCapture?

Boekell: Time has been cut drastically when it comes to processing our volunteers. It used to take a day to get a club restarted, but now I can do this process in only a few hours. This has given me more time to process more people for more clubs. It has also freed me up to do other office tasks.

Q. Would you recommend Square 9’s solutions and why?

Boekell: Absolutely! I already have recommended Square 9 to other organizations and I would continue to do so. I truly feel that Square 9’s solutions have saved us tremendous time and money.