Leveraging Relationships to Achieve Community Value

Helping people with unique learning and training needs often requires highly specialized equipment. Organizations that work with special needs clients typically have staff that are well versed in purchasing and implementing custom technologies. One such nonprofit discovered that partnering with NPower Atlanta/TechBridge gave it a resource boost and created new technology opportunities that added considerable value to the upgrade project.

The Center for the Visually Impaired (CVI) provides equal access to jobs and education for people who are blind and visually impaired. The organization teaches its clients to become totally self-sufficient and competitive in today's job market by teaching computer training and other technical skills. CVI has a computer lab equipped with special-use technology for its clients, but the systems had become outdated. CVI applied for and secured a grant from the United Way to upgrade its computer equipment with support from NPower Atlanta/TechBridge.

NPower Atlanta/TechBridge worked closely with CVI technical staff to negotiate favorable deals on the specialized hardware CVI needed to get the lab up-to-date. This included an embossing machine, which allows CVI clients to print documents in Braille, and 19-inch split-screen closed-circuit TV monitors that can magnify images on a computer up to 80 times, allowing partially sighted clients to read material on screen. They also installed Dragon Naturally Speaking, a program that uses voice recognition to read spoken text into word processing systems.

Thanks to its membership in the NPower Network, NPower Atlanta/TechBridge was able to help CVI apply for and receive a technology grant for free Microsoft software, including Windows Server and 50 licenses for Windows XP operating system. NPower Atlanta/TechBridge and CVI negotiated service maintenance agreements that allow CVI to upgrade its systems in the future as new versions of the software become available.

"Organizations like CVI are the reason we work at [NPower Atlanta]/TechBridge," said Greg Sims, senior consultant at NPower Atlanta/TechBridge. "One visit to their offices and the value of technology becomes immediately evident."

Bill Woolf, Associate Executive Director of CVI, also saw value right away. "Partnering with [NPower Atlanta]/TechBridge turned out to be a real plus for us," said Woolf. "In addition to providing some very welcome manpower, they brought their technology partnerships to the table, which helped us significantly enhance the scope and value of our acquisition. [NPower Atlanta]/TechBridge proved to be much more than just a project manager. By putting their relationships to work for us they became a real technology enabler for CVI."