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Case Study - Education & Non-Profit
A Better Chance
File Storage makes it easy for A Better Chance to manage the referral process to over 300 college prep schools across the country.
A Better Chance is the oldest and only national organization of its kind, changing the life trajectory for academically talented youth of color via access to rigorous and prestigious educational opportunities for students in grades 6-12. Its mission is to substantially increase the number of well-educated young people of color who are capable of assuming positions of responsibility and leadership in American society. It carries out its mission through its signature College Preparatory Schools Program (CPSP), which annually recruits, places and supports approximately 500 new scholars in more than 300 member schools around the country.
Challenge
Working with over 2,000 geographically dispersed applicants and more than 300 schools at any given time, A Better Chance must send thousands of applications to hundreds of locations. “We were burning everything to CDs,” explained Community Schools Program Manager Adam Lenter.
“If an applicant was applying to 5 or 6 schools, the application would have to be burned to 5 or 6 CDS,” added Chantal Stevens, National Director of the College Prep Schools Program. “We needed something that was more user-friendly and seamless.”
Solution
When Chantal mentioned the challenge to a friend, he recommended File Storage. Founded in 2005, File Storage now serves more than 50,000 companies from small businesses to Fortune 1000 that look to File Storage to simplify online content management, accelerate team productivity and connect employees with a familiar interface that anyone can use.
Chantal and Adam decided to test the service on a focus group of field users. “We needed to make sure it would work the way we thought it would,” Chantal explained. When the overall feedback was positive, they implemented the service across their member schools.
Now A Better Chance uses File Storage on a daily basis to share thousands of files with schools across the country. Employees simply upload student applications to specific school folders to give the schools access to specific applications. The schools can then use File Storage’s comment and tagging features to evaluate and sort applicants. “They’re also able to create their own accept and deny folders to help sort through the applications,” explained Adam.
After using File Storage for several months, A Better Chance has found huge time, cost and convenience savings. “It’s nice being able to instantly get all of our applications to our schools without sending a CD and keep them in a clean environment,” Adam remarked. Chantal added, “The cost savings in term of mail and postage is big. It also saves us money in terms of labor.”
“File Storage is more than just a storage solution,” Chantal commented. “It allows users on the other end to access, update and comment on files, so it really serves as a collaboration solution.”
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