Office of Community Affairs – Orlando Mayor’s Office
Client Business
The Office of Community Affairs (OCA) is the arm of the Mayor’s Office at the City of Orlando, Fl. They handle many aspects of the local government’s involvement in the community including various award and volunteer programs, as well as a variety of summits, events and grants.
Business Challenge
OCA was using a combination of Excel spreadsheets and network file sharing to track details about their various operations. OCA was experiencing many of the hallmark difficulties with this type of environment, characterized by difficulties in collaborating, sharing information and managing multiple information silos.
Solution Provided
Extensitech developed a solution for OCA to track Volunteers, who are individuals that are interested in providing volunteer services to OCA. Application details and outcomes were tracked in the Volunteer’s record along with personal details. Since a volunteer may have many Background Checks in the system, Extensitech created a feature set for OCA to hold the relevant details for OCA’s evaluation of the Volunteer following the completion of a Background Check. OCA’s users are also able to enter Volunteer Hours, represent time that a Volunteer has worked ‘through’ the OCA. An Hours report was provided and allowed the users to specify the date range for which to report.
OCA also tracked information on Sponsorships, which were records of a donor giving funds to the City. General details like date and amount are tracked and reported upon in the solution. In addition, OCA users can link any Donor to any event he or she attended in connection to any number of Sponsorships.
OCA is also responsible to track Nominees, which are students nominated for the Humanitarian Award. Extensitech created a solution that tracked these special Contacts as Nominees rather than Humanitarians so that those Nominees who did not receive the award can continue to be tracked for future nominations and historical record.
Extensitech also developed a feature set for OCA to track Projects, which contain details about an organization’s activities pertaining to a specific effort or event where the organization has applied for grant money from the City. An organization may apply for grant money multiple times over the life of a Project and may receive many Disbursements. In the system, Grant Applications represents organizations requesting money for Projects and Disbursements were records of grant funds being given to an organization for a Project. In addition to this vital information, OCA had the ability to Request the Mayor’s Involvement from the solution, which were records allowing tracking of requests for the Mayor’s involvement and details about the event in question as well as whether or not the Mayor chose to attend.
