Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Texas has a mission to provide children facing adversity with mentoring relationships that "change their lives for the better, forever," says Chuck Altmiller, chief financial officer at the organization. These professionally supported, enduring, one-to-one relationships are shown to have a positive impact on young people. It can help to offset some of the setbacks many young people face and equip them to grow and realize their potential.
Empowering Young People Against the Odds
Big Brothers Big Sisters was founded over 100 years ago with the vision to defend the potential of every child. It is a performance-oriented organization, focused on creating a positive impact in the communities it serves through mentoring relationships. Its staff and volunteers have seen that young people are faced with ever-increasing obstacles in our society today. As a result, children need to be provided with meaningful support and guidance in order to overcome these challenges and fulfill their potential.
Big Brothers Big Sisters focuses specifically on helping children who face stressors known to make them more vulnerable to negative behaviors and delinquency. These include young people who struggle academically, who have been abused, who are living in poverty, among other potentially detrimental factors. Mentoring is an effective way of counteracting some of the negative consequences of these situations faced by young people. In other words, the presence of a positive and caring role model invested in the future of an at-risk youth can have a truly positive impact in that person's life.
Infrastructure, Efficiency, Transparency
Big Brothers Big Sisters started using QuickBooks in 1998. Before that, it relied on traditional ledgers and handwritten journal entries. "As you can imagine," says Altmiller, "this was not very efficient." Through TechSoup, Big Brothers Big Sisters got access to a reliable accounting system significantly below its retail value, which is essential for any organization. QuickBooks automates many simple bookkeeping tasks, saving small businesses and nonprofits like Big Brothers Big Sisters a huge amount of precious time.
The extra pressure on nonprofits to offer financial transparency to their donors makes an error-proof accounting system all the more important. QuickBooks enables its users to generate detailed reports on a moment's notice, helping nonprofit organizations to stay accountable to their donors and grantmakers. On that note, Altmiller mentioned the easy flexibility of the QuickBooks software, essential for a nonprofit relying on grants that start and end intermittently, and are constantly changing. The program has adapted to the organization's needs and resources over the years. This has enabled it to take control over its finances while maintaining the ease of use that makes QuickBooks so accessible for a mission-focused organization.
As well as a discount for nonprofits through TechSoup, you can also find online training in our marketplace to make transparent, reliable accounting more accessible.
Veritas Provides Peace of Mind — and So Much More
In the five years since Big Brothers Big Sisters began using Backup Exec, Altmiller says it has become an integral part of their disaster recovery plan. As well as the detail and reliability needed to restore individual files, Altmiller has found that the backup and recovery features are robust and easy to use.
In situations where employees have accidentally deleted important files, Veritas came to the rescue. Altmiller says that "having Veritas there to restore those files saved Big Brothers Big Sisters a tremendous amount of time from re-creating work that had already been completed.'' As a nonprofit, the organization has resources that are precious and limited, making a reliable backup system all the more important.
Veritas is an industry leader, aiming to continually simplify and automate data protection for physical, virtual, and cloud environments. It is chosen by all of the world's top 10 companies and 99 percent of Fortune 100 companies. Investing in quality data protection software is just as important, if not more, for nonprofits as it is for large corporations. It's even more essential when, like Big Brothers Big Sisters, an organization carries the personal data of its beneficiaries. Veritas is a great option for nonprofits due to its reliability, ease of use, and the fact that you can get it as a donation through TechSoup.
Defending Potential
With Veritas and QuickBooks, Big Brothers Big Sisters is able to fully invest in the children in its program, knowing that their data is safe and their bookkeeping is up to date and running smoothly. With this technology backing them up, the organization can direct more of its energy and finances towards the projects, training, and events that empower young people in its community.
Additional Resources
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