/ CASE STUDY AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL imeet Central is a critical collaborative and organizational tool for the nonprofit leader in the fight for human rights H I G H L I G H T S THE PROBLEM Amnesty International USA has a simple mission with a complex workflow behind it. To tell the stories of people whose human rights are in jeopardy, the organization the largest grassroots human rights organization in the world brings numerous experts into its approvals process. Friction arose when stakeholders had inconsistent access to key documents and squandered time searching for current drafts and important information buried in old email threads. THE SOLUTION imeet Central is the repository of things that matter for Amnesty s digital and strategic communications department. Using imeet Central s task management, the team tracks its communications from first draft through production to final approval, while also providing a single, shared location for all updates connected to its cases and causes. THE RESULTS Amnesty credits imeet Central with eliminating delays in the approvals process, saving hours each day previously devoted to chasing after updates and searching for information. In addition to enhancing internal collaboration, imeet Central inspires new ways of working more efficiently with the organization s vendors. WHAT S AT STAKE? This is a story about how imeet Central helps nonprofits like Amnesty International tell their own stories more effectively. It s a story about what drives and inspires us professionally and how to spend more time doing those things and less time bogged down by inefficient workflows and tedious administrative work. It s a story about a Saudi Arabian blogger named Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for running a website dedicated to social and political debate. It s a story of a grassroots organization trying to raise awareness and drive action to protect Badawi s rights and the rights of countless other victims of injustice around the globe. It s a story about people who want to help and who don t have any time to waste. 1 / 9
COLLABORATIVE STORYTELLING Behind every Amnesty press release or initiative to raise signatures for a petition: a large network of stakeholders and experts, all tasked with crafting compelling calls to action while accurately reporting on the cases the organization is seeking to publicize. In the case of Raif Badawi, when we want to communicate something outwardly about his case, it doesn t start with putting one communication out into the universe, says Shiloh Stark, Amnesty International USA s senior director of online growth and cultivation. It actually starts with research and country advocacy strategy from our experts on Saudi Arabia and from our Individuals at Risk campaigners. Our digital and When speed and transparency are critical, you can t afford to work out of your inbox. 2 / 9
imeet Central is the critical organizational tool that our department uses. Shiloh Stark / senior director / Amnesty International USA strategic communications team will then draft a message to tell that story to our online activists. We share that internally in imeet Central to get peer feedback on whether we re telling the story in the most compelling way to help people understand what s really at stake for this individual. And then we will seek approvals. Stark and his team then track the document as it winds its way through the approval process, attracting feedback from international colleagues, advocacy directors and policy directors. Sometimes an approver or reviewer isn t an imeet Central user, so the asset takes a hiatus before being uploaded back into imeet Central with all of the tracked changes. There are a lot of eyes that see these pieces before they go out, so we can be sure that our reputation for accuracy, impartiality and integrity which is the basis upon which we do all our work is upheld 100%, says Stark. Eventually, the copy is put into production and the communication is released into the world but it also remains within imeet Central, awaiting any future updates. When a development occurs, the communications team can easily get back up to speed. It will always live within imeet Central, says Stark. We can easily reference the work we ve already done, and build on that so there s no delay or friction in us communicating out what the next step is for our activists. imeet Central is the critical organizational tool that our department uses to organize this work. 3 / 9
FREEDOM FROM INBOXES AND NETWORK DRIVES Whether they re working for a nonprofit organization or a profit-thirsty corporation, today s employees don t want to be tethered to desks, to unwieldy technology, to inflexible schedules, and so on. imeet Central untethers our work, Stark says. You re able to organize your work and really collaborate with other people using the various tools available in imeet Central. Organized workspaces provide easy, reliable file access for collaborators around the globe. His team no longer has to log into a VPN or rely on shared network drives in order to gain access to key documents. Files are easily accessed and shared from any device, whether in-office or onthe-go. Stark also notes a reduction in time spent digging through unorganized email inboxes. imeet Central offers a way to create really quick and easy continuity, he says. It s the repository of things that matter. 4 / 9
A NEW WAY OF COLLABORATING WITH VENDORS Stark s team mostly uses their imeet Central workspaces for internal collaboration, but they ve also opened up several workspaces to outside vendors, as a means of centralizing communication and keeping action items and important information from being lost in the archives. As a result, they ve started spotting opportunities to gain more visibility into product roadmaps and improve how these vendors are servicing the organization. We ll create a task for them in imeet Central, associate a milestone with it, and then connect every month or two to see where they are in their roadmap and how they re stacking up to our needs, says Stark. That s been incredibly useful as well. 5 / 9
ROI: DOING THE MATH OF WASTED TIME What s the value of smarter collaboration and enhanced efficiency? We ve previously showcased customers who have linked revenue growth and production savings to imeet Central. For Stark and Amnesty, and presumably with many nonprofits, the math looks a little different. The level of efficiency that imeet Central brings demonstrates its ROI. Shiloh Stark, senior director, Amnesty International USA The level of efficiency that imeet Central brings demonstrates its return on investment, he says, noting that the organization re-evaluates the solution each year prior to renewing its contract. When you rely solely on email or network drives or some mix-and-match solution where you can t see versioning and comments in a single place, when you can t find the file someone emailed you a year and a half ago, all of those moments of friction add up to hours of the day that people spend chasing things down or losing track of things. I am intensely aware of wasted time, he continues. I know my salary and the salaries on my staff; when you actually do the math of that wasted time, it adds up very, very quickly. So if we can have a tool that eliminates that friction and organizes the chaos, the value to the organization can be directly measured against the salary cost of your staff, the opportunity cost of your staff and volunteers, and what you could be doing if you weren t spending half the day chasing down five emails from various stretches of time ago. 6 / 9
MORE TIME FOR WHAT MATTERS I love coming to work here, Stark says, even though devoting four and a half years to the Amnesty communications team, as he s done, is to immerse oneself in the stories of people facing really difficult circumstances. Business as usual doesn t have to include friction and chaos. Our campaigns create a lot of positive movement, so that really keeps you going, he says. When you see that you ve written letters and then you see that person has been freed, that s really gratifying. In the case of Raif Badawi, Amnesty is a key driver in the huge international outcry in support of Badawi s release from custody and in support of freedom of expression everywhere. By creating an approvals workflow that hinges on collaboration and transparency, Stark and his team are able to avoid unnecessary production delays and unhappy surprises, thus getting their urgent messages out to the world as quickly as possible. At imeet Central, we re proud to be helping Amnesty International USA and a long list of nonprofits find new ways to focus on the lifechanging work they do so well. 7 / 9
HERE ARE THREE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT imeet CENTRAL... 01/ 02/ 03/ Document versioning. Number one is definitely the versioning of documents and being able to recover any past version of a document you re interested in. Subscriptions and commenting. You can be subscribed to a document and then be notified any time anyone has anything to add or say about it. Very robust task management. You can assign yourself and your team tasks, be really clear about deadlines and dependencies, and see those deadlines and dependencies mapped out over the course of a full project. GET INVOLVED WITH AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Want to help make a difference? Visit Amnesty International USA s website for more information on the issues, cases and campaigns they re tackling around the world. Shiloh Stark senior director Amnesty International USA To learn more about Raif Badawi, see the Flogged for Blogging page on Amnesty s site. 8 / 9
ABOUT imeet CENTRAL imeet Central helps people work together in ways they never imagined possible. Our collaboration platform connects people and information in the cloud, making it possible to share files, combine knowledge, inspire ideas, manage projects and more. More than 750,000 users worldwide use imeet Central everyday. Key customers include CBS, MLB.com, BBDO, Pizza Hut, Amazon, Sesame Workshop, Pinkberry, the Humane Society of the United States, CareerBuilder, Javelin Marketing Group, Workday and more. imeet Central is a PGi product. / 866 900 7646 / imeetcentral.com 9 / 9