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The Problem:
New Beginnings Executive Director, Kevin Mullen, recognized that the Merrimack Valley community had a vast pool of non-profit agencies. But too often, the people in need weren't getting connected to the programs that could best serve them. Why? Lack of awareness was a big problem. How, for example, does Jane Doe in Tewksbury discover local, supportive housing for women in substance abuse recovery, located on a bus route? (Try finding that in the yellow pages).
The same challenge applies to non-profit personnel as well. A food pantry coordinator discovers that a new client in Lawrence also needs ESL training as well as credit counseling for non-English speakers. How do agency personnel get this kind of detailed knowledge about other agencies' programs?
Earlier Solutions
Some organizations compiled paper directories of community programs. These helped, but quickly became outdated as programs appeared, change or disappear. Distribution was another problem. They rarely made it outside of the non-profit workplace.
More recent attempts had produced static on-line directories. This solved the problem of availability. But updating was difficult, time-consuming, and error-prone, as all change requests had to go through the person responsible for manually updating the site content. Moreover, program listings were often not searchable.
What the community needed was a centralized, readily-available, expandable, accurate, always up-to-date, comprehensive, simple-to-administer, and easy-to-use directory of community non-profit programs and services.