Case Studies > Long on Knowledge, Short on Funds

A 10 year-old nonprofit that provides technical assistance and performs cutting edge research was expanding rapidly.  For the first 10 years of the organization’s existence, the close knit team easily collaborated, sharing knowledge verbally and storing documents on their individual computers.  When a colleague needed a document authored by another, the document owner e-mailed it.  All members of the team knew who the subject matter experts were and if a question arose, the subject matter expert was called to provide information.  Knowledge was stored in individuals' heads, e-mails, and their personal computers.  Collaboration was informal, but effective for the small group.

Over the past year, the organization had doubled in size.  Demand for the organization’s services ballooned and new staff, from remote offices all over the United States, joined the team.  However, everyone struggled to get new staff up to speed and it was difficult for new staff to know what information the nonprofit already had and what information needed to be found externally or created.

An Executive at the organization with experience in the private sector determined that in order to train new staff, share information across all staff and make the organization scalable, they must invest in a Knowledge Management System.  However, after reviewing Knowledge Management products, the Executive grew concerned that existing products were not only out of the nonprofit’s price range, but were also more complex than needed.

The organization contracted with Annkissam to develop a custom, web-based Knowledge Management System using the open-source technology Drupal.  For under $5,000, Annkissam built a Knowledge Management System that allowed geographically disparate staff to collaborate on document creation, easily share their subject matter expertise, and keep everyone up-to-date with what is going on within the organization.  Both experienced and new staff find the system highly intuitive.