CharityTrak Online

CharityTrak Online (CTO) is a web based, software tool to social aid charities such as food banks, rental assistance agencies, and the like to track what clients have utilized and when they have assisted. Today, many systems have migrated to the Internet. Five Gulf has migrated its successful food bank tracking program, CharityTrak, to the Internet. CharityTrak Online contains all the client tracking features of CharityTrak, plus more in a web based application. There are several reasons why a charitable organization would need to utilize a web based product:

• Multi-location organizations: For food banks that operate from more than one location, CTO is the solution. All locations can share a common database. A client at the main office can go to one of the other locations and all information on the client is available. One central database means generating report for all sites. The ability to generate reports by site is also available.
• Community Networks: In a community where there are multiple charities and clients are supposed to utilize only one resource? CTO allows multiple charities to share client contact information while protecting the amount of help given. Multiple charities can share demographic information, allowing one update of information available to all charities.
• Common Reporting One food bank act as a clearing house for several charities? CTO can provide custom reports for each organization. The sponsoring organization can pull demographics while not seeing the organization's specific data.

What makes CTO different from other packages? It's your package. Five Gulf requests the user community send in changes and requests to improve the system. Many times the changes you need are implemented quickly. Our staff realizes you are the expert in what you need for in a system. We strive to make the package fit the needs of the user community.

CTO is designed to be a net zero cost. What does that mean? It means that the time saved by staff utilizing CTO will pay for the software itself. The cost of CTO is $50.00 per month on a semiannual billing. For an office worker that is working at $10.00 per hour, that means if CTO saves 5 hours of staff time, time spent looking up client histories, gathering data from monthly report, doing ad-hoc statistical reporting for grant writing, then the net cost to the charity is zero. That time can be spent doing other projects for the charity.

Ease of use

Modeled after the PC based system, CTO is designed to be very intuitive and easy to use. Having specialized in online systems, the project manager knows how to make screens user friendly. Each screen is crafted to make it as easy as possible to enter the data

The system was developed by a user, for the user. The chief system architect spent seven years working on at a food bank as a volunteer. He saw was was done and what was needed. When developing the latest online system, the developer leaned heavily on their beta test site¹ to develop a system that was easy to use.

CTO is used to track contacts and services rendered. Every time a contact is made with a client an entry is made in the system. If a service, like a monthly food allotment, can only occur once during a given time frame; the rule can be noted in the system. If a client requests the service too soon, the system warns of the violation.

Every screen has a help panel. The help panel explains, in English, not technical jargon, what the panel does, what confusing fields mean, and how the various links and buttons are used.

CTO has a built-in Trouble Ticket system. This subsystem allows administrators to enter and track communications with the development staff. When a new trouble ticket is entered, the developer gets an email notifying him of a new ticket.

Features

• Client demographics are kept for both the main client and all members of the family.
• Every contact with client is tracked as to when, where, why and the disposition of the contact.
• Service Rendered
• Name of person making contact
• Service Requested
• Food bank distribution fields
• Payment data (Account, Check Number, GL Account, Amount of check
• Appointment Scheduling allows the charity to schedule caseworker appointments online by anyone in the organization. The system will email clients of the appointment the morning before the appointment.
• Loan Processing For charities that make small loans to clients, CTO will track the loans and loan payments.
• Reports
• Daily Activity Report
• Contact Report
• Unduplicated Contact Report
• Payment Log
• GL Account Report
• Median Income Report
• Several Statistical Reports
• Food Bank Reports
• Custom user reports, up to two included free. Others can be added at a minimal developmental cost. No additional monthly charges.

What others are saying about CharityTrak Online

• "Overall though I like CTO and I think you’ve done a good job of making it easier to use" -- CharityTrak user migrating to CTO.
• "I spent a LOT of time behind the wheel of Charity Trak [Online] last night. I can tell that you put a lot of time into this system. It's well thought out and easy to use." – new CTO User

Frequently Asked Questions

What About support of the current system?

`I will continue to support Release 6.0 of CharityTrak at least through the end of 2011. If there are still users on the old system at that time, we will discuss support. Maintenance agreements are now $100.00 / license / year. I will fix problems, but there will be no further upgrades/

What about my existing data?

If you are currently a user of CharityTrak, I provide free migration of the data from CharityTrak to CharityTrak Online. If you have other software, I can provide a bid on converting the software.

Is my data safe?

Safety is always critical. As a user of the Internet I am keenly aware of the dangers of using servers and web based stores. The system uses secure links between the server and the end user to protect the data on the web. The server is locked down as tight as possible to prevent others from getting into the system.

In reality, CharityTrak is a low-risk target. When hackers spend time penetrating systems they are looking for credit card numbers and identification information to steal. The only non public data stored on the database is the social security number. As charityrak.com is not a well known web site and is not on any web search engine, the chances of being hacked are slim.

What about system problems?

Five Gulf’s main server is in a secure web hosting location in Dallas Texas. The center has emergency power and is staffed 24/7. The server utilizes the latest technology to prevent failure.

Five Gulf has a hot backup server available if something should happen to the main sever. In a matter of minutes, the system will be back up with at least last night’s data available. As time goes on, data will be stored on both servers for instantaneous backup of data and system recovery.

What's the cost?

CTO is priced to be a net zero cost to you! What do you mean “Net Zero Cost”? Glad you asked! All software should be a money saving investment. We use a word processor as it’s so much faster than a typewriter. CharityTrak Online (CTO) is just the same.

The cost of CTO is $50.00 per month on a semi-annual billing. For an office worker that is working at $10.00 per hour, that means if CTO saves 5 hours of staff time, time spent looking up client histories, gathering data from monthly report, doing ad-hoc statistical reporting for grant writing, etc., then the net cost to the charity is zero. That time can be spent doing other projects for the charity.

Billing options are:

Time Purchase	Price	Total Due
1 Month	$75.00 / Month	$75.00
3 Months	$60.00 / Month	$180.00
6 months	$50.00/ Month	$300.00

Ready for a Test Drive?

Go visit our demonstration system at http://demo.charitytrak.com and see the software in action. This is a full system where you can add data, make changes, and basically evaluate all the software. There are the "usual suspects" on there as clients to work with. Any changes to the data will be there till the next Saturday night². Work the software as much as desired to feel comfortable.

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¹ Special Thanks to Mr. Johnson at Helena Food Share for being the beta site cooridnator. His patience with working through bugs in the system and suggesting many improvements has made CTO a better product.

² Every Sunday morning the demonstration database is reset to a standard configuration. All data entered the previous week is lost.