Situation

Independent Living, Inc. provide an array of services that assist New Yorkers with all disabilities to live fully integrated and self-directed lives.

The Independent Living, Inc. is rooted in a philosophy of self-reliance and self-determination. The organization offers a range of services to individuals with disabilities and their families, including advocacy, peer counseling, benefits advisement, housing information, transportation, living skills training, and employment services.

As a non-profit organization, the Independent Living, Inc. relies on a huge variety of printed materials and promotional items to help complete its mission, as these support everything from educational efforts to fundraising activities.

Challenges

The ability to control printing, production, and distribution costs was extremely difficult, since the businesses they can work with are quite limited in order for the Independent Living, Inc. to retain their NY State grants. Since they couldn’t save by simply switching vendors, they needed to find new ways to streamline this critical part of their communication, fundraising, and educational efforts.

Solution

The Cooley Group was initially called in because they did a small amount of business with this client and were always thought of as their best overall vendor. As part of their ongoing relationship, they would listen to issues, ask questions, and offer suggestions on how the Independent Living, Inc. could handle situations.

The whole time, Cooley made notes on the problems their customer was having, so they knew what needed to be done to help the account. They suggested a new ordering website to manage repeatedly ordered printed products. The site would also support additional sales of promotional products and commercially printed items that change with each order.

Materials managed and distributed via the online site would need to include annual reports, fundraising event materials, business cards and stationery, educational and informational collateral, sponsor-branded promotional items, and much, much more.

Results

The completed website was able to manage many more items than the Independent Living, Inc. initially thought they could distribute via this new tool. They are very happy and wished they had done it sooner. They are saving a great deal of money from artwork charges, and saving even more time in workflow processes, which frees them up to do their real jobs. The Cooley team was subsequently asked to speak at a seminar for people in the fundraising business on how they can enjoy these types of improvements themselves.

[ Client Testimonial ]

Russ and Jackie are timely, professional, talented, creative, and dependable, and they always bend over backwards to be sure we are completely happy.