Advance Brighter Futures is a mental health charity in Wrexham. Their focus is not on medical treatment or therapy, but on improving the quality of life of their beneficiaries. They help individuals experiencing mental health problems build a meaningful and satisfying life. They promote health, wellbeing and recovering, and ensure that no individual feels like they are on their own.
CHALLENGE
Their old system was holding them back from growing because it was so difficult to use. It was unnecessarily complex and they found themselves looking for awkward workarounds to get their work done.
They had been using Charitylog to manage their work previously.
Producing monitoring reports was a lengthy process that took several people, several days to complete.
HOW THEY USE MAKERBLE
They have created digital referral forms which are shared with professional referrers in their network and also posted on their website. This means they can receive self-referrals as well. All referrals go straight into the Advance Brighter Futures system, which frees up 5 to 6 hours of admin work each week.
All the information relating to one person is all in one place, so it is available at the staff member’s fingertips. This way no information gets overlooked and staff can provided the best possible service to each individual beneficiary.
Staff can leave comments on other people’s work and keep track of everyone’s work.
The team can quickly identify case studies to include in funding bids because anecdotes are easy to record on Makerble and tag to the client they relate to. This is allowing Advance Brighter Futures to tailor the case studies they use to the specific requirements of their funding bids.
IMPACT ON THE ORGANISATION
We asked Advance Brighter Futures what the impact of using Makerble has been. This is what they said:
Staff and volunteers are more independent. This also frees up time for supervisors because it’s easier for the team to administer and manage their own projects
You can see everyone’s work in one system, which eliminates duplication. This saves time and decreases the chance of human error.
Progress and impact is represented in a helpful visual way, which is useful on two counts. It helps to show progress to funders. Also, it helps to show personal progress to beneficiaries, so that they can easily see and appreciate their own journey.
As it is so much easier to assemble the information needed for reports and funding bids, their monitoring time has decreased by at least 50%
The fact that staff are now responsible for the data input on their own projects (rather than an administrator) has made staff more emotionally invested in their projects. They can see their progress, which gives them a boost and makes them feel that they’re making an impact.
It’s easier to see the impact and therefore easier to sing praises about the impact. The staff felt they were making a difference before, but they didn’t always have the data to prove it. Now they can prove it to funders, to themselves, and to their beneficiaries.
