Posted By: Andrew Sager on December 18, 2024
In this blog, Melina Smith shares how Scan IM's inventory management software helped a local nonprofit track inventory donations to better serve community members in need.
The Grace Upon Grace Project (GUGP) is a local nonprofit in Loveland, Colorado, dedicated to providing under-served families in the community with diapers, wipes, and period products. These items are all necessary healthcare products but can sometimes be too costly for families and individuals in need. And since many federally funded safety net programs do not cover these products, this puts many women and children in a difficult situation.
The narrative around period poverty is a sensitive subject that rarely gets discussed and has failed to be addressed by communities for years. That all changed in the Fall of 2019 when The Grace Upon Grace Project opened its doors and set out on a mission to end period poverty. Each month, GUGP receives hundreds of donated items ranging from diapers of all sizes to wipes and a variety of essential period products. GUGP stores these items at a local warehouse and packages them for community members in need.
What began as a modest initiative quickly grew into a full-scale operation. In their early days, GUGP team members would have to manually count donated items by hand and keep track of them in spreadsheets. As GUGP began to grow, so did the number of donations. Tracking those items in spreadsheets became a real challenge for GUGP. The process was time-consuming, prone to mistakes, and a big headache for all team members and volunteers involved. Especially on distribution days where once a month, community members visit the GUGP warehouse to pick up their items. With only a 1-hour pick-up window to serve 150 families in line, there simply wasn't enough time for GUGP to update the inventory spreadsheet and track which items were leaving their warehouse.
Emily Jorgensen, founder of The Grace Upon Grace, knew they had an inventory problem that needed to be addressed quickly. So, when she discovered Scan IM's inventory management system, she was determined to put the software to the test with a trial run during one of GUGP's upcoming distribution days.
On Saturday, February 10, three Scan IM team members volunteered to help facilitate a trial of Scan IM. GUGP replaced all their inventory spreadsheets with an iPad running Scan IM's software and paired the tablet with a Bluetooth scanner. As inventory was being pulled out of the warehouse, volunteers would scan barcodes for those items and let Scan IM update their inventory counts in real-time.
The results were exactly what GUGP had hoped for, but there was still one problem. GUGP needed to collect signatures from community members who picked up their items. Juggling an iPad in one hand, a barcode scanner in the other, and a clipboard to collect signatures proved to be difficult for volunteers. The Scan IM team knew there needed to be a better way to collect signatures, so they showed up the following month with a solution: an ET40 tablet from Zebra.
On March 9, the Scan IM team returned to the GUGP warehouse to help deploy their new ET40 tablet on distribution day. The tablet ran Scan IM's software and had a built-in barcode scanner, eliminating the need to juggle a Bluetooth scanner. And instead of collecting signatures with paper and clipboards, they used the tablet to collect e-signatures. GUGP could now scan items, collect signatures, and update inventory in Scan IM, all from a single device.
The process was more streamlined for volunteers and more importantly, GUGP could instantly run inventory reports out of Scan IM to see the impact their distribution day had on the community. A process that used to take GUGP hours and sometimes days to complete could all be accomplished in a matter of seconds thanks to Scan IM's intuitive reporting features. Below are the inventory reports for GUGP's distribution day in February and March 2024.
February 2024 Distribution Day: 9,000 donated items to community members in need.
March 2024 Distribution Day: 8,300 donated items to community members in need.
"Scan IM has been one of GUGP's best investments to date. Switching from manual paper-based methods and spreadsheets to Scan IM's unified platform saves our team hours in physical inventory counts each month. This transformation has not only streamlined our processes internally but allows us to better serve our community on distribution days."
-Emily Jorgensen, GUGP
For more information about The Grace Upon Grace Project or to donate, please visit their website at www.graceupongraceproject.org.
If you're a nonprofit looking to streamline your inventory management operations, you can find out if Scan IM is the right fit for your team with a risk-free 14 day trial! All eligible nonprofits will receive 15% off their monthly subscriptions.
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