Our Blog from Simon Solutions

Helen Keller once wrote, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

These words resonate within my soul.  They have become my mission in life – to help people discover the benefits of working together for common purposes.

This is especially true for community service providers; those who help meet the needs of people during times of crisis and despair.  Every community is faced with this enormous challenge.  So, would it not make good sense to share the responsibility?

Just think what would happen if every community service provider suddenly began working together.  By this, I refer to churches, non-profit charities, and social service government agencies.  Suddenly, service providers would say, “Count on us to help.  We don’t care who gets the credit for acts of service.  We simply want to see all the people within our entire community benefit from our working together.”

If this was to truly happen within a community, no one would go hungry; no one would go without shelter and clothes.  No one would feel alone in their sorrow or desperate situation.

I believe this can happen in any community in America if we would follow Henry Ford’s simple formula for success.

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”
-Henry Ford

Service providers should start by “talking” with other service providers in their community.  Get to know each other; after all, service providers have the same passion and burden to help people.  This is true, regardless of what name appears on the organization’s letterhead.  They all have the same mission.

The second step is a little more difficult.  Service providers should make considerable effort to build relationships with each other.  This may mean cutting through all the busyness and noise in our own organizational environment; finding time to gather together with others from different organizations.  Luncheons, casual visits, telephone conversations, and roundtable discussions are all good ways to build friendships that lead to working relationships.

Another way to stay together is to find a “common tool” that helps facilitate an on-going working relationship.  One that helps all community service providers stay “connected” in communications, collaborate, and shared case management.  This progressive step with ultimately lead to a better understanding of needs and a focused approach to care.  This can happen through a web-based software solution that everyone has access to and really likes.

The third step in actually working together will provide a broad-based solution for care that covers the entire community.  Everyone benefits.  Service providers can now share responsibility. No one is overwhelmed.  More resources are identified for meeting needs.  Referrals are easily found.  Recipients are given proper care.  No one “falls through the cracks”.

This shared working environment will also cut back on duplication of services and combat benevolence fraud.  This saves organizations time and money. The right resources get into the right hands.

Another great benefit of a shared working environment is innovation.  Innovation happens as we capitalize on knowledge-sharing, which becomes a powerful asset.  I’ve come to realize that all of us are smarter than any one of us.  This then leads to a collective-knowing, which serves as a catalyst for community-driven solutions with creative applications for other areas of concerns.

By working together, community service providers can find hope in transforming their community from the inside out.  Instead of only seeing problems, needs, and deficiencies, the focus can shift to solutions and assets. 

This ignites progress and growth.

When people work together, great things happen!

For years I have rallied the cause for relational synergism – people working together for greater purposes realized only through concerted efforts. The results can be phenomenal.I am witnessing this happen in my own community, right now! When hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August of 2005, the aftermath impacted my community in Northwest Alabama. Over 330 displaced families from the Gulf Coast found refuge in our community.

Social service agencies, non-profit charities, and churches came to the rescue.Many resources from different sources were allocated to Katrina victims, but a problem emerged. Who was getting what and how much? Were services being unnecessarily duplicated? Were the right people getting the right resources? This awareness sparked much dialog among community service providers, who realized that this problem was not an isolated incident, but a “big problem” that had been prevailing for years. Something needed to be done to help service providers “get on the same page” in communications and collaboration.

Leaders from the United Way, Red Cross, Salvation Army, government agencies, and churches sat down together and talked. This rare encounter paved the way for a collaborative solution for “shared case management”.These leaders approached us at Simon Solutions in October of 2006. Looking for a software solution, they handed us a single sheet of paper with only a few ideas. They said, “Can you build us something that we all can use; something simple to understand and easy to use?” We said “Yes, but only if we work together throughout the entire development process to see if this solution is something everyone will like and use.”

They agreed.Combining our knowledge of software design with ideas from community service providers, we built CharityTracker (known as SEANTracker in our community).By definition, CharityTracker is an on-going, collaborative effort – a community-partnered solution; built by the community…for the community. CharityTracker is a powerful example of people and technology working together; creating solutions that really work! Tina Scott, director of the United Way of Northwest Alabama, said “For the first time in our community’s history, churches, non-profit service providers, and government agencies have found a common way to work together; using a simple, easy, and affordable tool everyone can use.”

CharityTracker is a “shared community database”, a centralized hub for communication that is networked throughout the entire community. All information is entered and edited by individual case workers with shared access. And because CharityTracker is powered by internet technology, service providers have instant access to information 24/7, 365; whether at the office or in the field.

CharityTracker works best when only one “community network administrator” is designated for the entire community. This organization is usually the one who has built working relationships with other service providers. As administrator, this organization maintains the integrity of the database by qualifying organizations that share access to confidential information.All information in CharityTracker is safe and secure. Only authorized users with a password have access to shared case files. No IT department or webmaster is needed to host or maintain CharityTracker. We (Simon Solutions) do it all. We also upgrade the software; depending upon feedback from service providers and their needs.

CharityTracker has given our community a simple and easy solution for “shared case management”. With better communications, service providers are seeing measurable results in reduction of fraud and duplication of services. Becky Daughtery of Woodmont Baptist Church says, “Just in the last few weeks, the software has proven itself more and more valuable; and we are really starting to see that the more benevolence organizations that use it; the more effective that it becomes.”In less than one year of service within our community, CharityTracker has enabled over 74 agents (representing 33 agengies) to work together in shared management of over 7,000 cases. CharityTrackers helps save time and money; enabling service providers to focus their resources on people with real needs.

Simply stated, it works!

Just as Katrina’s devastation swept across the Gulf Coast, a solution for helping victims more efficiently is sweeping all across the state of Alabama. The word is getting out quickly. Prior to our official nationwide launch, ten networks of community service providers, scattered throughout

Alabama, were already making plans to use CharityTracker to better serve their communities.

Our community’s synergism is a powerful testimony to other communities all across the United States. If we can “get people on the same page” here in Northwest Alabama, you can do it also!For more information, go to www.simonsolutions.com or www.charitytracker.net.

We are very excited to announce the launch of CharityTracker! Like we said in our new blog, we’ve worked long and hard to bring you what may be the easiest way to track charitable assistance in a community.

All of us at Simon Solutions like to collaborate. We like to work with each other and we like to work with others. We’ve teamed up with the charitable organizations in our community and the result is both exciting and rewarding. CharityTracker is a labor of love, and we’re glad to share.

If you’re looking for an easy way to keep track of what’s going on in your community, as it pertains to charitable assistance, then CharityTracker may what you’re looking for.

Give it a test drive at CharityTracker.net. Let us know what you think!

We’ve been working with the United Way to make SEANtracker, a secure web application that tracks charitable giving in Northwest Alabama.

We released the first version late last year, and have been working ever since to make it better and better. We’ve carefully listened to the needs and wants of the SEANtracker community, and they’ve helped us make a truly remarkable service.

The results have been great, we launched SEANtracker V2 last week. And now, Simon Solutions is going to make all that hard work and collaboration available to other communities. We’re calling it CharityTracker.

You can take CharityTracker for a test spin in early September.

People desire deeper personal connections with one another, and are constantly looking for ways to accomplish this within their busy lifestyles. With more and more people gravitating towards social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook in order to keep in touch and foster community, we realized that the Church could benefit from similar tools that are more secure and available to expand existing community groups online,” says Mike Simon, visionary and president of Simon Solutions.

To read this full press release and keep up to date with the buzz/press about Simon Solutions, visit our news page.

We are very pleased to be writing a new chapter in the Simon Solutions story. You see, we’ve wanted to update for a long time now, but we’ve been so busy making tools, we’ve neglected our website. It’s true what they say, the cobbler’s children go barefoot. There are only so many hours in the day, but we’ve finally found some time to give our site a makeover.

We think the new site will be easier to navigate, and be more informative. Also, with the new site, we’ll be able to hear from you, and we think that’s the way it should be.

We have a lot of cool things in the works. Those of you who have been reading Mike’s blog will note the addition of other people blogging too. Mike gets busier and busier as we make a name for ourselves out in the big wide world. We’ll be teaming up to make sure you always have something worthwhile to read. Stay tuned! Great things are in the works.

We hope you understand that we are here to help. Yup, we’re a business, but that doesn’t keep us from being servants of God. You can be sure, we want to do the best we can to help those who come to us. We think the internet should be easy. We won’t rest until it is.

Cheers!