Innovation Idea: App for Thomas Merton Center

Innovation Idea: App for Thomas Merton Center

I used to be an intern for Thomas Merton Center last year, which is a non-profit organization in Pittsburgh. I worked as a consulter to diagnose the problems that Thomas Merton Center had and to propose strategic reports for its development as well as solutions to the center.

In this process, I found a serious problem of communication in Thomas Merton Center. TMC only has 5 employees and relies on volunteers to support. TMC have 22 project subordinating to the center, which is led by 22 project leaders. Moreover, TMC has 12 board members and a membership system. The management efficiency is very low because information is sent by email or by invitation letter. There is a very large gap between information because all of these people are volunteers and they seldom meet. This condition is not very healthy for the development of an organization.

I would highly recommend TMC to develop an app to share information, manage volunteers and members. TMC has a flat organization design, we should include the functions with different groups, but also set privilege to different group of people. The app should include functions as followings:

1. Information and News module: TMC could post the organization information, news and activities, this is open to all.
2. Group meeting module: effectively manage group meetings among broad members, project leaders or members, which make TMC employee easier to communicate with different groups.
3. Project management module: this function should be exclusively to project leaders and employee related in order to record project financial status, project planning and schedules.
4. CRM module: this function should be exclusively to TMC members and employee related in order to manage members to enhance member viscosity.

Through this technology, TMC could have effective communication, speedup the project and gain more customers. They could gain competitive advantage by sharply reducing costs, so that information could flow very effectively. Moreover, the TMC activities could spread out by project leader quickly, which is an add-on to promotion. Thus, TMC will gain bargaining power with customers. If more customers choose to become members of TMC, TMC could have more budget on campaigns and promotion.