Redefining A Company

Microsoft products have provided the software foundation for our small non-profit company and allowed us to redefine the concepts of “Who we are and what we can do for our customers.” We have positioned ourselves in the past through our reputation, but as we grow we find a need and have a desire for more effective fundraising and customer awareness of our services. The Microsoft Products purchased through TechSoup have permitted us to market ourselves and our services to the public.

MATCO Services, Inc. is a small company in the business of providing employment services for adults with disabilities in Central Ohio and has since 2002. Our customer base is two fold. We provide employment services for adults with disabilities and additionally provide contract labor to customers who require temporary to permanent experienced labor. We specialize in fulfillment, kit assembly, collating services, sub-assembly, janitorial services and housekeeping, but we are not limited to those services.At this point, we are positioning ourselves to transition from a small sized company to a medium sized business.

I cannot say enough about Microsoft Office Professional for getting us through the process. This software has opened doors in many areas for our company. We have created presentations for staff and clients alike using PowerPoint, more efficiently organized our company email through the use of Outlook and created spreadsheets in all departments using Excel. We are also using Microsoft Access for equipment inventory and supplier contact purposes; all of which have added organizational and operational efficiency to our organization.

I would, however, like to highlight Microsoft Word for its unsurpassed ease of use and versatility. This piece of software has been a very effective tool in the creation of a website, newsletter and brochures. These developments sound very basic but the creation of a website (www.matcoserv.com) has been particularly successful in expanding the reach of our services to new customers in both markets.

Studies show that 70% to 93% of non profits have a website, but in actuality the smaller the nonprofit, the more likely to have no Internet presence at all. There are many reasons for any non profit to build a custom site:

• Cost: Expensive to build/maintain, strains resources

• Technology: Requires technological expertise/ infrastructure, expensive and hard to find resources

• Time: Time-consuming diverts attention away from mission

• Maintenance: Difficult to maintain, obsolete info on website

• Reliance on third parties: expensive and risky

• Lack of cohesive Internet strategy: lack of prioritization

As a non profit we have to pinch pennies. Until we can afford the expense of advertising we continue to create all of our marketing materials in house. We created our own designs and formatting for the website because our current design and hosting service (AT&T) allotted a small amount of time for website design and the AT&T design consultants could not appropriately represent the two sides of our business. By using Microsoft Word we were able to mock up various designs and more importantly to work through the process of prioritizing the type of information to highlight and the type of information to share with the world about our company. We fortified the site using our likes and dislikes from other websites and formatting styles from Microsoft Publisher. Using templates from Microsoft.com, images and text were easily controlled and configured into pages for the website, newsletters and brochures. At this point, we have a model from which an innovative website could be created from the progression of ideas that have evolved over time.

Our website is in its formative stages yet the site is used immensely by prospective consumers and clients. As we grow, our vision is that the website will motivate people to support our organization, help to develop long term relationships with donors, track donor demographics, recruit staff and volunteers, build capacity, become transactional for merchandise purchases, attract in kind donations, lower fundraising costs and add more event attendees, members, planned gifts and increased advocacy. Like any non profit, we want our website to further our mission and not just describe it. Online donations are preferable to offline donations. Since 100% of major donors ($10,000+) are influenced by the web and only 40% of nonprofit site visitors take some form of action.

Our long term goal is to create a lot of branding interest and generate high numbers of visitors to the website. At this time, we have set up our website to give details about the organization as a whole and the services that we can provide. The website also speaks to how our services further our company mission. To our Consumers: “Our promise to provide a whole life experience that is based on your choices about work, education, training and leisure activity, and to do so with dignity and respect for you and your decisions. We promise to provide you with as many work opportunities as possible and to pay you fairly for your work.” To our Customers: “We take pride in our quality and we promise to meet your deadlines with quality products and services. We promise to work hard to meet your expectations and to do so at a fair price.” “Without you, there is no MATCO.” We believe in diversity in the workplace!

We have seen an increase in potential Customer and Community Partnership interest by 3% and an increase in potential Consumer registrations by 2% per quarter. The numbers are small, but incredible despite the current market. We have better organization in our sales, accounting, human resources, production and administrative functions, but the development of our website was a journey that we couldn’t have made without the software foundations laid by Microsoft Office Professional.