ABOUT THE CUSTOMER
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) is one of the world’s largest nonprofit philanthropic service organizations, facilitating more than $3 billion in grantmaking to nearly 70 countries since its founding in 2002. Continuing the Rockefeller family’s legacy of philanthropy
across a wide range of issue areas, RPA provides research and counsel on charitable
giving, develops philanthropic programs and offers complete program, administrative
and management services for foundations and trusts worldwide. What started out as a smaller nonprofit has grown through the years into a much larger entity with 45 full-time employees in four offices in the U.S. With growth came more sophisticated information management challenges. No longer served by a simple IT framework, RPA needed to optimize its information—and its technology infrastructure—to support its long-term vision to create a new culture of great giving.
CHALLENGE
Like many nonpro ts, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors faced a series of unique technology challenges that aren’t typical in the corporate world. They lacked the technical savvy found in the for-pro t sector that often has a seasoned and sizeable IT department. Many of the processes established for nonpro ts are customized and don’t t into an off-the-shelf IT solution. In addition, there are legacy systems that don’t talk to each other and automated processes that these systems can’t support.
Most of all, budgets are tight and don’t leave room for dedicated systems staff.
“We are in the business of helping donors make grants to good causes, so every dollar taken away from a grant has great scrutiny,” said Nick Hodges, Senior Vice President and COO of RPA.
Lacking the funds and in-house expertise to support
its network, nonpro ts routinely turn to outsourced IT partners to keep them up and running. RPA did just that in 2001 after it separated from parent Rockefeller Family Of ce, where it previously shared space and a computer room. Wanting an IT network of its own, RPA turned to mindSHIFT for Managed IT Services at its headquarters in New York City.
Drawing on its prior success with law rms, associations and other nonpro ts, mindSHIFT was a natural t for RPA. mindSHIFT’s sweet spot was serving organizations with 20 to 150 employees, providing full IT managed services or an a la carte menu of services. Highly exible, mindSHIFT could host equipment at the customer’s site or in its own data centers.
In the beginning, RPA’s IT needs were fairly simple. It had one office, 20 employees and servers located in a large air-conditioned room onsite. But as RPA considered relocating to a new headquarters in New York City and adding more offices—in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco—the organization knew its IT needs would become more complex.
“We started to think about multiple offices that needed to connect to our headquarters and we engaged with mindSHIFT for Managed IT Services at that point,”
said Hodges.
SOLUTION
RPA signed on with mindSHIFT for its Total IT Management suite of services, where its entire IT infrastructure would be managed, maintained and supported. With this offering, mindSHIFT manages RPA’s network and services, sets up computers and printers, oversees email and mobile phone applications and provides on-site service.
mindSHIFT also maintains back-up servers and workstations, installs and manages software
updates, patches and rewalls—and provides
24/7/365 customer support via the mindSHIFT Customer Care Center in the U.S. Especially unique was mindSHIFT’s expertise with applications for nonpro ts— programs speci cally designed to manage fundraising, accounts payable/accounts receivable and donation tracking.
Additionally, mindSHIFT provided guidance to RPA on hardware implementations and served as a single source for acquiring new PCs or laptops. The mindSHIFT team even helped RPA develop a technology roadmap and understand their options for upgrading its servers and network as it grew.
When RPA relocated to its new headquarters, mindSHIFT and RPA jointly decided that a hybrid infrastructure model was the best approach. Various services were moved to the cloud, one server was maintained at the new location and two servers were installed at mindSHIFT’s data center to serve remote users at the new locations.
“This was a huge project for us. We had to update all the server technology and move to our own partitioned piece of the cloud,” said Hodges. “It was a very successful project that really increased our storage capacity compared to our old New York facility.”
The upgrade also helped RPA move to the Office 365 platform that enables users to work anywhere, anytime, on any device. With this true business-class platform, RPA was able to take advantage of many new Office 365 tools including advanced video conferencing to stay connected with colleagues in all four U.S. of ces—and anywhere they traveled across the globe.
“Being able to support Office 365 brought a level of sophistication to our office that we didn’t have before,” said Hodges.
The mindSHIFT team was also integral in helping RPA set up and support employees remotely at the new office locations. With these users accessing the network—and all the sensitive nancial and donor information contained on it—security is always a concern. But in the end, RPA was assured that mindSHIFT had all the tools in place to protect the network and end-user devices from external threats and internal viruses.
“Our systems are up and running all the time. There’s no downtime to speak of, which is pretty phenomenal for any business,” said Hodges. “When we migrated to our new server environment, the mindSHIFT team worked the entire weekend and had all four of our offices up and running
by Sunday afternoon. I’m not sure if other IT vendors even work on weekends or evenings.”
RESULTS
Eight years into the relationship with mindSHIFT, RPA decided to evaluate its options in an increasingly crowded field of IT service providers. After all, RPA was mindSHIFT’s long-standing client in New York, though many more have come aboard since.
RPA wanted to make sure it was getting the level of service it needed—at the best price. They issued an RFP and invited mindSHIFT as well as other providers to respond. In the end, mindSHIFT once again stood out as the right partner to continue with RPA.
“What I like about mindSHIFT is when something goes awry, they are very open to feedback and will course correct based on that feedback,” said Hodges. “What makes a really great partner is not perfection, but the ability to respond and adapt.”
