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Case Study: YMCA of Greater Cincinnati

GoLightly Enables Cincinnati YMCA to Engage Easily and Quickly With Community Partners

A Case Study Interview with Rebecca Kelley, Executive Director of Community Services, Cincinnati YMCA

GoLightly: How does the Cincinnati YMCA use GoLightly’s tools?

Rebecca Kelley: We use the GoLightly tools to manage the "Cincy After School" programs that we administer for the Cincinnati Public School system. Specifically, we use it to communicate with partner agencies that are involved in the program, which are all locally run and are located all across the county. GoLightly functions as an "intranet" for our staff, volunteers, and our community partners, providing a way for all of us to stay in contact with each other, share documents and files, and have a "place" where we congregate. When a new community partner agency joins the program, I love it that I can say: "It’s all on the community network," because it is all there. What we use the most is the Welcome Page and the Documents Library. The Welcome Page helps us build community and create a shared vision. The Documents Library is a place to find enrollment forms. I can upload files into the Documents Library when I’m on the road, and people can have access to them immediately, which is so helpful. GoLightly has enabled me to move at the speed of light.

GoLightly: How did you implement the GoLightly tools, in light of the fact that many of the users are not YMCA staff?

Rebecca Kelley: Our After School programs rely on collaboration among a large number of local agencies, some of which are 45 miles apart from each other. We interviewed people to find out how to improve collaboration, and the top issue was communication. Our ongoing challenge is to make sure that everyone in the program knows what else is going on, and that everyone has access to documents to fully participate in the program. To assure this transparency, we use GoLightly to store documents, and to update people on the latest news. During the launch of the program, we sent several email blasts to everyone involved, inviting them to log into the GoLightly site. Within two months of our launch, over 70 people had activated their account, and now we’re at 144. I’ve personally trained about 25% of those people to use the site.

GoLightly: How has transparency of information impacted the After School program?

Rebecca Kelley: The success of any collaboration is the openness of information. People want to be included, and they want access to information at the same time as everyone else. It builds trust. Our GoLightly system makes people feel totally included. We can create open or closed workgroups so that the right people are plugged into the right conversations. We’ve recently started Blogging so that we can keep other community agencies informed about our work and to show them the progress we’re making.

GoLightly: How does transparency of information apply to a Metro/branch situation?

Rebecca Kelley: GoLightly has enabled better communication between branches and metro. I use GoLightly as a workspace for our staff, where people can post comments, and others can react to it. I manage a number of email discussion lists through GoLightly, which is a timesaver but also assures that everyone is kept in the loop. Also, people can search for keywords, and find conversations that have occurred in the past on a certain topic.

GoLightly: How has staff at community agencies reacted to using the GoLightly tools?

Rebecca Kelley: Overall it’s been tremendously positive, given how much we’re trying to do with the After School program, which is to expand from 9 to 22 sites. There’s so much going on, but I can send people to the GoLightly site and trust that people will find the curriculum or the forms that they need.

I like to tell the story of one woman who is a partner in the After School program, who was not initially enthusiastic at all about the partnership or the GoLightly tools. After working with her and doing some training, she has since told me how amazed she is at what we can do on the Web, and how fast we can communicate with each other. GoLightly has helped us cross the bridge to a better partnership with her and her local agency, and has improved our trust.

GoLightly: Would you recommend GoLightly to other YMCA agencies?

Rebecca Kelley: I’m a huge GoLightly fan, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s incredibly easy to use, it improves communication at all levels – in house, with volunteers, with community partner agencies – and lets us work more quickly and more efficiently. I like that it combines a number of online tools that we really need and use every day. And best of all you need very little technical knowledge to use it. Thanks, GoLightly.

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For more information, please contact:

Dale John McGrew
GoLightly, Giving Communities a Home Online
Contact Form: click here
Email:

See the Cincy After School website at: http://my.CincyAfterSchool.org/

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