CCS Fundraising, a nonprofit consulting firm, needed a way to increase communication, education, collaboration, and connectivity among their 3,000+ employees across various domestic and international offices.

CCS Fundraising began their search for a modern intranet solution to solve these issues. CCS Fundraising ended up adopting MangoApps instead of other vendors because of its user-friendly focus, wide selection of functions and tools, and consolidated database platform.

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In this video, you will learn how CCS Fundraising used MangoApps to:

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1. Encourage employee participation and engagement
2. Simplify file sharing with real-time search capabilities
3. Create an educational environment with a centralized knowledge database

Full video transcript:

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Doug Adolph, Vice President:

“So CCS is a nonprofit consulting firm. We work across the world, working with organizations across a variety of sectors accomplish their nonprofit goals and their philanthropic goals. We’re based out of New York and we have offices throughout the United States. Our larger offices include Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, LA. We have offices in St. Louis and Dallas. So, we have a really wide net of offices to service our clients across the country. And then, we also have offices in Europe.”

Arshia Sultan, Director of Knowledge and Learning:

“This is our hub. It’s where everyone goes, not only to collaborate with each other and talk to each other online, but also get all of the documents that they need, share information about their own projects, share their own resources with each other in a true sort of peer-to-peer interaction. And so, that’s how we came up with The Source ’cause it was the source and the hub for everything to do with our company.

We were in a period of growth several years ago at the time that we were looking into other internet solutions and we came across MangoApps and it was kind of a moment of, “Oh wow, this has all of the different features that we need.” Most specifically the document sharing, the newsfeed and the collaboration aspects to MangoApps and the search, that was a big deal. We were looking for kind of a Dropbox solution that we could house internally. And so, that’s why MangoApps was so appealing to us.”

Annie Bidwell, Senior Director:

“Before we had The Source, we always really worked in silos. I have colleagues across the country, across the globe really. And before, I only worked with my team, only worked with my colleagues. And it was challenging because there’s not a lot of people on my team who do what I do. So once The Source came into play, not only was I able to find past samples, the latest, best work products that our company’s been putting out but I think, more importantly, I’ve been connected with colleagues who I didn’t even know existed, didn’t know did the role and the job that I do. And it’s really made my work product a lot stronger. And has pushed me to grow as a professional being able to connect with these colleagues not only on a monthly, or quarterly, or weekly basis, but really on a day-to-day timeline, which has been absolutely terrific.”

Doug Adolph, Vice President:

“I think it’s very intuitive. We did a nice job of training everyone from the get go. But once you log in and play around for an hour or two, or a session or two, it’s very easy then to find the information that you’re looking for. That said, I think I always want something new every time I’m on The Source because I do try to just tinker around and try to approach it from a different way. But it’s very easy to understand how the program works and how it can best suit you and benefit you.”

Arshia Sultan, Director of Knowledge and Learning:

“We do this orientation for our new hires where we’ll explain The Source to them and go through each piece of it. How you navigate, where you find things. And I’ve had folks who will come in on their first day and say, “Oh yeah, I was on there on Friday ’cause I gained access and it’s great. I already found a few things that I was looking for. It was really easy to navigate. It was really easy to understand what the site is all about.” So it’s almost immediate.

And it’s very user friendly, not just from a user perspective, but even from the backend for us to make changes. Or for us to create pages, or wikis, other things that we need to do from the backend, it’s super easy.”

Brook Laskin, Executive Director:

“So, I use The Source every day. It’s pretty much the first thing that I do when I get to work. I log in and I use The Source to access my email first and foremost. But then, I also use it to upload documents that I’m currently working on. So, if there’s a client file that I’m working on, I’ll open it up and work on it, edit it, save it there instead of using a different cloud-based storage service. So, I use it every day for those types of needs.

A lot of what we do is on the road, road warriors, so to speak. And so, when we’re traveling in the airport, I love that The Source has a mobile app that we can just quickly pull up on our phones, log in, take care of our expenses ’cause it’s all linked, and also connect with colleagues. The one feature on the mobile app that is great is there is this message board with notifications. So, if a colleague has a question, or needs to quickly access a document, they can send a notification, you can get it on your phone and be able to help them in real-time and not miss beat when you’re on the road.

The folders on The Source are really great for storing the documents and especially since you can put access privileges on them. So, if you are working on something that’s internal facing with just a small group of colleagues, you can say that you only want those people to access that document and you can create and collaborate on that. It stores everything that you need.”

Annie Bidwell, Senior Director:

“I have it open on my browser all day when I work Monday through Friday, when I work from home on the weekends. I use it for day-to-day operations, just all of what we call our shortcuts, logging into my email, logging into our HR portal, logging into where I track and submit my expenses. But I most often use it for searching for samples. So, when I come across a problem or issue at my client that I’ve never come across before and don’t have a solution at my fingertips, I can go to The Source and either one search for a work product or a sample based on client location type work product, et cetera to see if there’s anything I can use as a starting point.

Or, more often, I’ll just go in there and ask a question in one of our community boards. So, no longer having to rely on email, emailing a few people hoping that they have what I’m looking for. But instead, posting a question that 300 plus of my colleagues see and I get answers almost immediately.

It’s very user friendly so, it doesn’t take long to learn. I think that’s another great feature of it is instead of having to rely on a 100 page plus training manual, we can have a new employee walk in, have them log on and there’s your email, there’s your HR, there’s your expenses, there’s your learning classes, all of your colleagues across the globe and what they do. So, just use it. Use it every day. The more you use it, the more helpful it’ll be.”

Brook Laskin, Executive Director:

“Between connecting with colleagues, editing documents, having all your HR information in one portal, it has everything that you need to know. You don’t need paper documents anymore. You can quickly access everything you need.”

Doug Adolph, Vice President:

“It’s always great to look at the newsfeed just to see what questions other colleagues are trying to work through and to see what other responses others have offered. And so, I always try to spend a few minutes looking at the newsfeed to see what’s going on within our current client engagements.”

Arshia Sultan, Director of Knowledge and Learning:

“As employees are scrolling through their search results, or just kind of browsing the site and they come across either a newsfeed post, or a file within the library that they really think is useful or important, they can pin it. And then they can easily get to it later. So, there’s like a pinned section and I think that’s great.

One of the other functionalities that I love is the saved searches. So, if you’re constantly going back to the same search terms, or the same search dimensions, you can actually save that search so that you can go back to it very easily. And so, when you click on Search, it actually pulls up your saved searches, which is great.”

Annie Bidwell, Senior Director:

“I have it open all day every day. I personally work out of our Chicago office, so I log on through my desktop and at home through my laptop. But I have a lot of colleagues who travel a lot more often than I do, and I know they use the iPhone and the Android app and really love being able to be on the road and still be connected to all of our colleagues all the time.”

Brook Laskin, Executive Director:

“So, I log into The Source every day on my desktop or my laptop, whatever it may be to use my email and then also access important client files. I also have the app on my phone so I can always be notified if a colleague has a question or needs a document, can quickly respond in real-time and not skip a beat with them.”

Arshia Sultan, Director of Knowledge and Learning:

“I log in every day. I log in different ways, so I have the mobile app uploaded on my phone and I’m always getting pinged with updates, or posts, or notifications, which is great. But I usually actually log in on my computer and the browser.

We have our employees on many different projects, as I mentioned across the US, and across Europe, and Africa and other places. And so, The MangoApps is an easy way for us to share our best documents where employees can learn from each other, and see what we’re doing across the firm, and use those examples as inspiration for our clients. And so, we always like to tell our clients that they have kind of the knowledge and learning of the firm behind them through the employee that’s working with them. And MangoApps allows us to do that.

And the search is another, we have a pretty advanced search functionality within The Source that allows employees to literally search and drill down into our metadata. And so, if they’re looking for a specific type of document, or something within a specific sector, or even just general information, they can use that search to do it.

The great thing that we’ve done with the search is we make public our best documents. And so, when the search results come about our best-in-class, we call it a super tag and it’s colored. And so it’s highlighted within the search results so that employees, as they’re scrolling down, can see which are the best-in-class documents and those results come up first.”

Doug Adolph, Vice President:

“It’s been a refreshing addition to our work here at CCS. It’s great to be able to connect with colleagues and share documents. And also, use it as a holding area for all things that allow us to really just communicate with each other.

I’m often logging onto The Source for resources. And so, looking for information about a specific client, or work that we’ve done with the client, or as it relates to some of our tools that we share across the firm. So, if I’m needing to look at research tools, or data, it’s great to just have one place to go in and find that information very easily.

I think it allows us to be more collaborative as an organization because we have offices across the country and across the world really. Sometimes there is a habit of just seeking our information from those that are closest to us. And using The Source has really allowed us to share documents and share resources across the firm as opposed to just across our team.”

Arshia Sultan, Director of Knowledge and Learning:

“We have multiple third-party vendors and-third party tools that we use and that we partner with. And so, it’s been really great to have this custom integration where we can share that information and those links with our employees. And we can kind of keep a log of who is using what. And so, they can go into The Source, they can click on those different tools, and we know who’s using what when. So, it’s not just about the functionality of it, which is great, but it’s also just about keeping track of what resources folks are using the most.

The best thing about MangoApps is their customer service. So, working with the team, working with the development team, any questions that we have, we have a dedicated resource that we can ask our questions to. MangoApps has kind of a community online, a hub where we can kind of post things that we might have questions about, or things that might be going wrong, and they’ll address that immediately. And I feel like they really listen to us. Any suggestions that we have about improvements or other functionality that we need, they’ll always listen to us and see what they can do to make us happy, really.”

Annie Bidwell, Senior Director:

“Absolutely. Again, I really think it has changed the way that we work. It’s changed the way that we connect. It’s pushed me to grow as a professional. I no longer have an excuse not to take a training class, or use a resource because it’s all so easily accessible. And I think our work product would not be as strong if we didn’t have a knowledge sharing platform in a centralized place to save our 70 years of experience, and the thousands of documents that my colleagues create every day and each year, and being able to access that in a moment’s notice is absolutely amazing.”

Brook Laskin, Executive Director:

“So happy that we have this tool. I can’t imagine what it would be like without. It makes everything just so much easier and simplified. It puts everything we need in one spot, so everything we have is available.”

Doug Adolph, Vice President:

“Very much so. It’s been a great addition to not only helping our individual teams become a greater team, but also just for workflow it’s very easy just to go and find what you want in a very easy fashion and be able to get back to work.”

Arshia Sultan, Director of Knowledge and Learning:

“We’re looking forward to expanding our use of MangoApps and of The Source, so we’re very happy.

From soup to nuts, it was a very, I won’t say easy, but it was… What’s good word to use it? It was just a great experience and a great process kind of building this project up. So, I would absolutely recommend it to friends.”

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