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NON-PROFIT STUDENTS SHARING COALITION IS
POWERED BY POWERVISION
COLUMBIA, MARYLAND-February 1, 2000- Students
Sharing Coalition (SSC) is a Baltimore-based non-profit organization
whose mission is to provide meaningful service and community learning
experiences to students from economically and culturally diverse
backgrounds. The goal is to develop these students into mature
and knowledgeable citizens, who, through their actions, take responsibility
for their communities.
Students Sharing Coalition had a need to
expand the scope and functionality of their web site, from an informational
site, comprised mainly of static information pages, to a more interactive
and robust e-Business tool. The executive director of SSC, Linda
Kohler, wanted to give student volunteers the ability to not only
access the site to preview the upcoming activities calendar, but
also have the ability to sign up for activities directly over the
Internet. Additionally, SSC wanted to develop an Intranet that would
facilitate the performance of administrative tasks, such as adding
or modifying items on the events calendar, tracking donations, and
maintaining student volunteer records.
The catch? SSC had limited resources
and funds available to perform the needed expansion and upgrades
in a timely manner. Enter PowerVision Corporation.
To meet SSC's administrative Intranet needs,
PowerVision developed an Administrative Center, which enables
SSC staff to add student, employee, and donor profiles to the organization's
database. Additionally, the SSC staff can log student volunteer
hours and monetary donations to the database, and add items to the
organization's Programs Calendar through the web-based interface.
Visitors to the SSC web site at http://www.studentssharing.org
can view the organization's Programs Calendar,
drilling down for detailed information about scheduled programs. Registered
visitors may sign up for programs, view a list of the programs for
which they have signed up, and review their volunteer history using
the additional functionality that PowerVision developed.
Reaction to the enhanced site has been very
positive. Notes Linda Kohler, "We are thrilled with the capabilities
that we have to offer to our students, staff and visitors to our
Web site. The generous contribution of PowerVision's
expertise, talent and resources has boosted SSC into the technological
age, allowing us to serve as a greater resource for our students
and the greater community. This is a wonderful example of
the benefits of corporations partnering with nonprofit agencies.
Our youth are our communities' hope for the future. PowerVision
understands this and has done something about it."
PowerVision used Microsoft's Active Server
Pages to build the site's new pages, which communicate with a Sybase
SQL Anywhere relational database via an ODBC connection. PowerVision
donated approximately 800 hours of design and development support
to SSC between September and December 1999 to complete this effort.
During development, special attention was
given to developing highly intuitive pages that would require very
little training for the SSC staff. Heavy emphasis was also given
to maintaining a consistent look and feel between the existing site
and the new pages, ensuring a smooth integration.
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