Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity: Community First
About Habitat for Humanity
With a presence in more than 90 countries, Habitat for Humanity International seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action.
Since 1985, Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity (TCHFH) has built homes in partnership with families who demonstrate need and willingness to work with Habitat for Humanity by helping to construct their own housing. In addition to construction, TCHFH manages community outreach and homeownership preservation programs that help low-income families keep their homes - something that is of increasing importance during challenging economic times.
Why Smartsheet?
"The type of work that is managed within the organization is broad - ranging from donor outreach and event planning to the construction of homes", says Brian Juntti, Director of Marketing Communications for TCHFH. "My six fellow directors and I benefit greatly from having up to the minute visibility on where each other's programs stand. The number of decisions that are made between monthly staff meetings are too many to count - and Smartsheet enables us to stay informed at all times."
Two areas in which Smartsheet has most notably enhanced productivity are with annual planning and event management. Smartsheet enables divisional work plans to be documented, hierarchically laid-out, and tracked over time. The ability to view stated goal and actual achievement side by side in a goal sheet has proven extremely useful. “In the setup and planning for events, there are more moving parts that demand greater collaboration - something that Smartsheet is well equipped to handle.", says Juntti.
Favorite Features and Value Realized
Ownership and date management: Managing events involves multiple people, each of whom need to know the scope of their role and the dates by which they need to get things done. With Smartsheet it is easy to assign primary owners as well as those who play supporting roles. The management of dates goes beyond a simple due date as well. Smartsheet tasks can have multiple dates associated with them. For example, it's possible to capture target and actual completion dates - something quite useful in post event review.
Row level discussions and attachments: The ability to enter discussions and upload attachments in the context of the individual work items makes it easy to store, find, and share information. For events, the team utilizes Smartsheet as the hub for managing a variety of content:
- Invitation lists
- Budget information
- Invitation design .pdfs
- Marketing solicitation to sponsors
- Room diagrams and layouts
- Program and event descriptions
- Contract information
With Smartsheet's send link to file feature, even large attachments can be sent to anyone without having to attach large files to e-mail.
Notifications: Change notification e-mails can be automatically sent to collaborators when updates are made. Each person can control whether they receive updates, how frequently they are sent (as quickly as 'right away' or as long as once weekly) as well as what triggers the alert. For example on certain sheets people request alerts only if status changes or new files are attached - on others they request to know when anything changes. Smartsheet notifications have greatly reduced the number of times we've had to interrupt one another to obtain the latest status or file", says Juntti.
- Industry
- Helping People in Need
- Favorite Feature
- Date Management, Attachments, and Notifications
“My six fellow directors and I benefit greatly from having up to the minute visibility on where each other's programs stand.”
B. Juntti
Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity
“We didn’t have a shared environment so that every time a document was updated it had to be emailed back and forth. Using Smartsheet has made us much more efficient and has created a central repository for all our documentation.”