We were excited to exhibit at Unite for Sight’s Global Health & Innovation Conferenceat Yale this past weekend.  How inspiring to hear

Captricity's Booth at GHIC

about the truly incredible work being done to improve health and save lives around the world! We learned about more innovative projects than we could begin to name, and were moved by the many people we met who truly cared about the work they were doing and the populations they were helping.

We were especially thrilled with all the positive feedback we heard about Captricity. Over a dozen people exclaimed “I can’t believe something like this exists!” when they discovered our web-based data digitization service.  Many of them shared with us stories of struggling to enter data in the field with limited staff and budgets, or frustrations of long lag times in data processing, and disappointing quality  and accuracy when they finally did get the data. It was heartbreaking to hear of such incredible work being hampered by data issues that we can easily solve.

While we’ve been interested in the global health space for awhile – Captricity was born out of Kuang’s research in a Ugandan health clinic, and my background is global health – this conference inspired us to do more. Stay tuned to hear about our plans to give away our services to some of the most inspiring “do-gooders” around the world.

In the meantime, are you or your organization struggling with data entry from paper forms? Please try out Captricity for yourself, or get in touch to learn more.

SurveyMonkey's Printable PDFs

SurveyMonkey's Print to PDF option

Let’s say Sara runs a neighborhood cafe and wants to know how her clients like the coffee. About half of her customers have their laptops constantly in tow; completing an online survey telling her how much they love the soy chai latte is a no-brainer. But then, she has a large and loyal clientele from the retirement community around the corner. They would happily sit for a few extra minutes to write about how delicious her new drip coffee is, but they wouldn’t go near an online survey. Sara uses SurveyMonkey to create an online survey and print out a paper version. At the end of the week, she drops the filled-in paper surveys into a scanner, uploads the results to Captricity, and gets a spreadsheet of her results.

We’re excited to be working with SurveyMonkey to make this even more tightly-integrated experience. Does this sound like something you’d like to use? Check out SurveyMonkey’s Printable PDFs.

(image from zoom_artbrush on Flickr )

We attended the Nonprofit Technology Conference last week. What incredible work organizations are doing to change lives around the world!  Unfortunately, nearly all struggled with data in one way or another,  including volunteer management, donations processing, and reaching less tech-savvy stakeholders. We want to help!  Below we’ve brainstormed some ways Captricity can ease the data burden, and would love speak more about others.

Data Integration
Most organizations used up to 6 or 7 of different databases and systems, many of which had similar information, but weren’t interoperable. They often included paper files and stacks of forms and surveys. Why not use Captricity  to digitize all that paper? We would provide one CSV file that could be synched with all databases and systems; no need to enter the data at all, let alone multiple times into multiple places!

Volunteer Management and Donations Processing
Non-profits are unique in their reliance on people outside of their organization, including volunteers and donors. An incredible amount of paper data is required to manage them, from the initial sign-up or membership forms, to even registrations, donation forms, etc. Much of this data is incredibly important and time-sensitive, but entering can be slow and takes staff time away from other important tasks. Captricity can help – send us a photograph or scan of the form you need entered, and we’ll get you data in a few hours. Spend time sending thank you notes and pledge forms, not typing in data.

Reaching Less Tech-Savvy Stakeholders
Retirees and wealthy elderly patrons may be some of nonprofits’ most important stakeholders, but most of them aren’t plugged into social media. The same is often true for target populations of many interventions. With Captricity, organizations can us paper to reach out to all of these constituents, without needing to worry about the amount of data entry they’ll have to do later.

Do you work with a non-profit? Do you think Captricity could help you? Sign up for our beta or contact us to learn more. While Captricity certainly can’t make data collection and management completely pain-free for nonprofits, we’d love to help ease the burden to give organizations  more time (and the data they need) to continue saving the world.