Case Studies: NeighborImpact

For 30 years, NeighborImpact has been providing the people in Oregon's Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties with a diversity of services that not only meet basic human needs for food and shelter but enrich lives through access to increased education, skills and hope for the future.

"Our services assist people to become more independent and self-sufficient, recognizing there is a continuum of support that all people need throughout their life. We envision a Central Oregon where residents, regardless of their income status, have hope and optimism and access to community resources that see them through times of need," says Michael Hensley, NeighborImpact's Information and Facilities Officer.

Communication Challenges

Communication is integral to this private not-for-profit's ability to achieve its multi-faceted mission. NeighborImpact relies on L-Soft's ListPlex – LISTSERV^® in the Cloud – email list hosting for both of its major communication needs: disseminating information to clients and partners about the agency's many programs and services; and, enabling donors, board members and staff to quickly exchange knowledge and stay up-to-date on important happenings at the agency. The organization currently runs 10 LISTSERV lists with a total of 2,000 subscribers.

NeighborImpact's move to L-Soft as its email list technology provider in the summer of 2015 came after the organization faced some challenges with its previous system. "We previously used a hodge-podge of in-house and external list hosting, none of which provided the power and ease of use that LISTSERV provides. LISTSERV has allowed us to migrate all our lists into a single system that we can easily manage and use to benefit our agency, clients and partners," Hensley says.

Hensley notes that while continuing to utilize its existing one-way announcement lists, the organization plans to add new LISTSERV lists for all of its programs. NeighborImpact is also planning to offer to manage email lists for partner agencies that don't have the funding or expertise to host their own lists.

NeighborImpact is creative, resourceful and flexible in designing services to meet the needs of the community. Hensley adds that the organization does this while maintaining the highest standards of excellence and accountability to donors, clients and the public. These standards extend to NeighborImpact's email list technology provider.

"L-Soft is a state-of-the-art email list software and hosting company that provides reliable and powerful email list management and sending capabilities. The hosted LISTSERV solution by L-Soft was our first choice," Hensley says. "The L-Soft cloud-based list hosting solution is very powerful and easy to use. Technical staff was extremely helpful in migrating our existing lists and setting up new lists. List management is very easy using the LISTSERV web-based interface."

Hensley offers a few key email list communication tips for other organizations:

• Ensure that you know what type of list you need and how you plan to manage senders and recipients.
• Be sure to think about privacy and the potential for misuse of your list in your plans.
• Spam filtering can cause many lists to be filtered into Junk email folders. Be sure that you include information about how to "whitelist" email list senders.

NeighborImpact's Services:

NeighborImpact's comprehensive services, designed to empower individuals and families to become engaged citizens in the community, include:

• HomeSource: Helping clients purchase and keep their homes through workshops, coaching and financial assistance
• HeadStart: Providing client families with quality pre-kindergarten education; health and dental care; family support; and nutritious meals
• Childcare Resources: Offering tailored referrals to licensed childcare providers and daycare centers
• Regional Food Bank: Connecting clients with food pantries and meal sites and collecting and distributing food to more than 40 different sites across three counties
• Heating and Energy: Assisting clients with heating bills and providing resources for making homes more energy efficient
• Home Weatherization: Offering free home weatherization services and weatherization assistance to help clients have warmer homes and lower energy bills
• Housing: Providing housing assistance services for eligible families in need of emergency shelter, transitional housing and rent assistance
• Skills for Success: Helping clients achieve financial strength and stability and have a better quality of life and more options for the future through personal financial workshops and coaching

To learn more about NeighborImpact, visit: http://www.neighborimpact.org

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