When you work in a non-profit, you often have to wear many hats. Sara Ascher knows this first-hand. As the Executive Director of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists (ICUU), Sara Ascher oversees almost all aspects of the organization, from coordinating events to managing the website.
As the organization’s only full-time employee, a lot of the web maintenance work fell on her shoulders. However, Sara doesn’t have an IT background, so updating and troubleshooting the website was a huge drain on her time and resources.
Additionally, she says the ICUU website was, “incredibly complicated and much more sophisticated than our organization actually needed.”
In short, their website was in desperate need of a revamp to make it more user-friendly and easier to maintain.
“I needed the website to be something I could understand and could update as needed in a way that was simple and made sense to me,” Sara explains.
Sara was referred to Wins by Vyda of the Canadian Unitarian Council and was immediately impressed with the breadth of experience he brought to the table. She also liked how he was able to quickly assess what the organization needed, while also helping her clarify her overall goals.
“I didn’t want to have to contract several individuals all doing separate things,” says Sara.
“It made much more sense for us to work with Wins who could do the spectrum of the work that we needed and help me figure out things I didn’t even know I needed.”
For example, in addition to updating the ICUU website, Sara also needed support connecting their distributed team. With team members based all over the world, not everybody had access to reliable internet or high capacity servers.
“It became a complete nightmare to get everybody in line and in sync with each other,” says Sara.
To address this issue, Wins helped Sara transfer all of the organization’s files to G Suite (now Google Workspace), which she says has made documentation, record keeping, and document sharing a lot easier. He also showed her how to apply for non-profit status to save money, as well as helped them navigate the various G-Suite resources and figure out which tools would work best for them and their needs.
He even helped them build out e-commerce infrastructure – “so it’s there if and when we’re ready to implement something like that,” explains Sara.
Today, Sara’s job is so much easier thanks to Wins.
“If he didn’t work with us, I can’t imagine the mess I would be in and how frustrated I would be and how much more time I’d be spending on administrative tasks.”
He’s completely streamlined her workflow, giving her hours back in her day, while also empowering her with the tools and knowledge to manage the IT work on her own.
“The way that he set it up for us, it makes sense,” says Sara. “I know how to change things, it’s easy to learn, and he walked me through every single step of the way.”
She highly recommends Wins’ services for any non-profit organization looking for IT guidance and ongoing support.
“He did a great job, the site is beautiful. I couldn’t be happier.”
