Case Study - Care for the Family improves teamwork with Huddle

With more than 100 employees, Care for the Family is one of the UK’s key charities promoting strong family life and helping those suffering from family breakdowns. Founded by best-selling author and speaker Rob Parsons, the charity is committed to strengthening family life and helping those who face family difficulties.

Its family-building events have been attended by over 300,000 people and many more have been helped through special initiatives – including stepfamilies, bereaved parents and those parenting alone.

Care for the Family is one of the first charity Huddle users in the UK.

Staff across four offices UK-wide and community representatives in Greater Manchester and the Isle of Man are using Huddle to work on projects together and exchange research and statistics.

With Huddle, Care for the Family’s employees can instantly create a network of collaborative team workspaces, each time bringing together the right team for the right project. Care for the Family benefits from free Huddle service, which is available to all registered charities.

The senior management team is already taking advantage of Huddle’s document sharing tools to distribute teams’ quarterly reporting on best practice. They also collaborate to create a survey template for use at the Care for the Family seminars. In addition, Huddle is used to facilitate training and plan workshops.

“Charities cannot afford to ignore Web 2.0. It solves many of our common problems: constant need for keeping costs low, improving communication between staff in various locations and bringing volunteers together,” said Jon Mason, Executive Development Officer, Care for the Family. “There are many collaboration applications available on the web, so proper evaluation is a must. We couldn’t fault Huddle – it offers a special package for charities, which is completely free and offers all necessary training and customer support.”

Care for the Family has already discovered some of the biggest benefits of Huddle – eliminating ‘email storm’. Traditionally exchanging up to 100 emails a day between various members of the team, the charity stopped sending any emails that involve ‘action’. All documents that require review or approval are now posted online in the charity’s huddle. Those responsible for action are tasked with review deadlines. Additionally, online editing means the staff can work from any computer, PC or Mac, not worrying about downloading and converting files.

In the future, Care for the Family is hoping to use Huddle to collaborate with similar interest groups in New Zealand and South Africa.