East Pasco Habitat for Humanity
Client Business
East Pasco Habitat for Humanity (EPHFH) is a non-profit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry affiliated with Habitat for Humanity International. They are dedicated to eliminating poverty housing in East Pasco County, Florida, by making decent shelter a matter of conscience and action. Homes are sold to families who partner with Habitat. They work 400 hours of “sweat equity” (as their down payment) to purchase the no-profit, no interest homes. Homes are built with volunteer labor to keep costs low and affordable. EPHFH has built 58 homes since its inception in 1994 and projects the next 50 homes will be built in 5 years.
Business Challenge
EPHFH needed a simple solution for keeping track of people and organizations in the community, particularly volunteers and donors. They were using the template files from FileMaker, but finding that the structure of those files, while a good example of features, is a bit simplistic.
Additionally, EPHFH needed to host its files for multi-user access. They were using peer-to-peer access, with a server machine “hosting” using the FileMaker Pro client software, a setup that, while workable, can be unstable and unreliable.
Solution Provided
Extensitech provided a free copy of xBase (as available on this website). Just by using xBase, Extensitech already provided a strong foundation to the solution, and that foundation already included support for storing contact information in an extensible, re-useable format. The xBase solution also provides places to record phone calls, emails, memos, meetings and so forth, so that users can see the entire activity history with a person, rather than only knowing of their own activities.
Extensitach also provided a few free hours of simple modifications, such as adding some specific attributes to People and Companies, and creating a Donors screen to track donors and their donations, monetary and otherwise.
Finally, Extensitech offered free hosting on our site, so that the solution would be backed up, secure and stable without the added expense of FileMaker Server software.
“East Pasco Habitat definitely needed an ‘up-to-date’ database system and Extensitech has certainly provided that for us. It has been a blessing to work with such patient people as we had many questions for them each time we used the program. Thankfully, now we are becoming more adept at working with the program and we love it! Thank you Extensitech!”
