Company Overview

• United Way of America is the national organization dedicated to leading the United Way movement

• A network of nearly 1,300 local United Ways work to advance the common good by focusing on education, income and health

• Local United Ways create long-lasting community change by addressing the underlying causes of the most significant local issues and bring together people from all across the community—government, business, faith groups, nonprofits, the labor movement, ordinary citizens—to tackle these issues.

Situation

• United Way had developed a home grown content management solution that required HTML skills in order to manage content, preventing business users from taking ownership of the website and putting a strain on IT resources

• As a result, the quality of online content suffered

Business Challenge

• United Way needed to find a Web content management system with a rich feature set to use for its public-facing Internet, intranet and local United Way extranets

• The organization needed to empower non-technical users to easily manage content to encourage user adoption

• The organization also wanted to enable volunteers to easily share how they “Live United” to help build community around local United Ways

Solution

• United Way implemented CommonSpot for its national website, and then used the system’s template architecture to create one template for local United Ways to leverage—each of which now manages its own Web content

• Developers leveraged CommonSpot’s flexibility to build simple applications that enable volunteers to easily share how they “Live United” by posting content to local United Way websites—via text, photo slide shows, videos, poll responses—without IT assistance

Benefits

• United Way changed the way content is managed organization-wide, enabling business users with an easy to use content management system and eliminating the IT bottleneck

• Business users now take responsibility for the content they own online due to CommonSpot’s inherent ease of use, and content is now consistent across the organization

• United Way volunteers can now share personal “Live United” stories on the website, helping build a stronger community around local United Ways and driving greater volunteerism

• The organization is currently testing a pilot for its intranet and extranet sites with the goal of providing better information, outreach and services to local United Ways