ORGANIZATION: Community Emergency Service, Inc (CES)
WEBSITE: Community Emergency Service
MISSION STATEMENT: The mission of Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery (GMCN) is to end child abuse and neglect and create strong, healthy families.
ORGANIZATION’S CHALLENGE:
Community Emergency Service has seen a significant increase in the number of clients using their food shelf in the past four months, about 350-400 people per day. As a result of this volume, managing appointments and a walk-in queue for clients to shop has become a challenge. The organization is looking for support from tech experts to create a SOP for their appointment and walk-in process, determine the best software for this system, and identify next steps for implementation.
Currently, the organization uses TimeTap to manage appointments, but balancing appointments with walk-ins is a challenge. In the current system, there’s no way to combine appointments and walk ins or automate an order on who gets to shop next, which causes tension among clients waiting. While the organization prioritizes appointments, they recognize the importance of being about to walk in and receive services and will continue to provide this option. Currently, a volunteer at the front desk and staff behind the scenes manually integrate walk-ins with appointments using an iPad. Walk-in clients wait anywhere from 15-45 minutes depending on how busy the food shelf is. Another scheduling dynamic that can be challenging to manage is how to approach clients who arrive early for their appointment. Determining a protocol on how arrival time impacts a client’s place in line is needed. With support from tech experts, organization leaders would like to create a SOP that outlines their approach to managing appointments and walk-ins before reviewing possible tech solutions.
After solidifying their approach, the CES team would like to review potential scheduling systems with their tech experts prioritizing free or cost-effective solutions. Besides successfully integrating walk-ins with appointments, leaders would like a tool that can create a visual display showing clients where they are in line, which is currently missing. Another benefit to staff would be the ability to integrate scheduling data directly into their CRM system – Pantry Saver, which is currently a manual process. Finally, staff would like to export data from this new system and generate reports around appointment counts, walk-in counts, and wait times. As time allows, the organization would like to consider next steps for implementation with their team of volunteers.
With a defined process and tech solution for managing and displaying food shelf appointments, CES can better serve its clients and improve efficiency for staff and volunteers.
POTENTIAL DELIVERABLE(S):
• SOP – food shelf appointments, walk-ins and arrival time
• Scheduling systems review and selection
• Software implementation plan
REQUESTED VOLUNTEER SKILL SETS: Business Systems Analysis, Cloud Architect, Process Management, Software Development, Solution Architecture
This spot is for the Project Lead Role - Project Leads help facilitate the meetings, guiding the team through the agendas, keeping folks on task and conversation flowing, inclusive of all voices. Project leads do not need to have expertise in all aspects of the challenge but rather have strong leadership and facilitation skills. They will also help schedule the scoping call.
