Chicago Scholars Blog

Non-profits who serve their constituents commonly require applications for their services to be submitted in writing or online. At Chicago Scholars we have an annual process where in the past we were receiving around 200 submissions for our college access and preparation program. In addition to the 5-page application document, applicants are required to submit transcripts, essays and recommendations from their teachers and counselors.  The combined paper trail of this process requires at least one full-time staff member to dedicate about 2 months out of the year to transcribe demographic data, organize, archive and follow-up with incomplete applications. It’s a daunting and inefficient task that gets repeated every year. A big downside is the fact that this process can only be scaled up by having more people work in the file room and for most non-profits that can be a barring obstacle that, without hiring new staff, prevents expansion or prevents employees from performing other responsibilities. Once applications are collected we transition into a review and selection phase where a number volunteers and stakeholders make time, usually during the weekend, to attend application review session in our office and help us select applicants that will be invited to the interviews. It’s a big part of our program and we were used to take this process for granted. That is, until the fall of 2009.

At that time we decided to take the plunge and completely overhaul this process before our 2009-2010 application cycle, which begins in December. We have completed a thorough review of our options, including the following:

• Hire developers to build a custom application
• Buy an off-the-shelf application software
• Partner with an application provider such as CommonApplication or others

After contacting such powerhouses as CommonApplication and DePaul University, we realized that most organizations have a custom-built solution made in house by their IT department. How many non-profits have an IT department? We know we didn’t.  Buying off-shelf was too expensive and did not provide us with enough flexibility, which would result in us having to effectively change our application process that has been perfected over the past 14 years.  So our last resort was to hire developers who would build our custom application system. Using Elance.com we received a number of quotes, ranging from $800 to $5,000. Along the way we learned that this process would be time consuming and the final product would be a static application system with no customer support going forward, unless we would contract developers on a retainer.

Luckily while reading TechCrunch.com I discovered that for the TechCrunch50 contest, Wizehive application tool was used. Digging deeper I learned about Wizehive.com, a new startup based in Pennsylvania that provides online collaboration software at a very reasonable cost. Between the time I made the first contact with Wizehive and the time our beta version of the online application was live, it took no more than 30 days. To our pleasant surprise Wizehive was not only building an infrastructure that fulfilled our most-desired features, but provided a number of flexible and tailor-made changes to their system to support our specific applications needs. By December 15, 2009 Chicago Scholars application process has been overhauled and aside from reducing thousands of pages of paperwork and countless staff hours of sorting applications, we now have a very powerful, cloud-based application system that is hosted and maintained by Wizehive. We are proud to say that all of the following features have been adopted into our new online application system:

• Collecting applications online (including essay and photo uploading)
• Students’ ability to request letters of recommendations through our system
• Recommenders’ ability to upload recommendations online
• Distributed application review process that allowed us to invite our stakeholder and volunteers to review complete applications from the comfort of their home or office
• Ability to run on-demand reports an all applicants
• Mass-emailing feature to contact applicants with any reminders or changes

This move to online allowed Chicago Scholars to grow at a rapid pace during the first three quarters of 2010. During this time we had doubled the number of applicants from 200 to 400 for our regular application process. Additionally we’ve been able to cope with a fast moving process of launching a collaborative summer program with Chicago Public Schools, called Launch. During a 3 week timeframe we accepted additional 500 applications using our online application system. We are happy to have discovered a trusted partner who helped us succeed in tackling our transition from paper to online.