The Hispanic Counseling Center (HCC) is the only fully bilingual and bicultural social services agency in Nassau County, New York. On average, HCC serves over 5,000 clients per year, most of them low-income Latinos. The agency offers a wide range of programs that address mental health, substance abuse, alcoholism, and youth and family services. The number of clients served and programs offered are even more impressive given that HCC only employs 60 staff members.
Requirements from funders have spawned a need for electronic health records and secure web-based systems, which made a technological overhaul imperative for continuing the agency's work. Unfortunately HCC, like many nonprofits, was limited in using funding for direct client services. Through the TechSoup software donation program, HCC received much-needed Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe, and Symantec software. For the 30-year-old organization, the new software was vast improvement from a patchwork IT system to a business-level one and critical to its ability to provide much-needed services to its community.