Slowing the spread: Six nonprofits fighting COVID-19 with Asana

Read this article in French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, or Japanese.

In response to the recent pandemic, nonprofit organizations around the globe have rallied to find a cure, support those most impacted, bring essentials to those in need, and provide disaster relief. To support these amazing organizations, Asana complemented its Nonprofit discount by offering 12-months of Asana Business to qualifying nonprofit organizations working on the front lines of COVID-19.

Prior to working at Asana, I was the CEO of Possible Health, where my team used Asana in our global healthcare efforts. I know firsthand how powerful it is when dedicated teams have a platform for collaboration and work management, so they can focus their time and energy where it’s most valuable. I’m proud to announce that as of today, more than 245 nonprofit organizations working on the front lines of the COVID-19 response are using Asana’s free 12-month offering to manage their work. Here are some of their stories:

New York Cares

New York Cares is New York City’s leading volunteer management organization. Each year, more than 50,000 volunteers serve upwards of 500,000 clients through programs aimed at improving education, meeting immediate needs, and revitalizing public spaces.

About a year ago, New York Cares launched an initiative to improve collaboration on shared goals by implementing formal project management standards, practices, and methodologies in Asana. But the organization-wide roll-out of Asana coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic—during which New York Cares was designated as the lead agency by New York City Emergency Management. As a result, New York Cares was mobilizing emergency volunteers and coordinating disaster response while simultaneously transitioning their team to fully remote operations, per New York City’s shelter in place guidelines.

“While the organization was equipped to operate remotely, without Asana being in place the staff would have had a significant challenge coordinating the massive response in programs that were required to support the city’s needs.”
Michael Gamber, Director, Volunteer Relations & Training at New York Cares

Through project management in Asana, New York Cares launched a new Phone Bank Program to check in on isolated seniors and remote learners, virtual programs to keep kids active, and a myriad of modified on-the-ground programs to keep the city’s most vulnerable fed.

Asana has enabled New York Cares to coordinate their disaster response to harness the good will of thousands of volunteers across the city.

IDinsight

IDinsight helps development leaders maximize their social impact across a wide range of sectors, including agriculture, education, health, governance, sanitation, and financial inclusion. They work with governments, multilaterals, foundations, and innovative nonprofits in Asia and Africa. Currently, IDinsight’s COVID-19 pandemic objective is to protect livelihoods and save lives within vulnerable communities in Asia and Africa.

*Talking to a village head about the viability of electronic data collection in Tigray, Ethiopia*

IDinsight uses Asana on a regular basis to manage their engagements with governments and NGOs in Africa and Asia, often directly collaborating with clients and partners in Asana. Asana has played a particularly important role in facilitating their day-to-day work with Educate Girls, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Morocco’s National Initiative for Human Development (INDH), and the Department of Education of Himachal Pradesh state in India.

In addition to task management, some features they love are Timeline View and the seamless Instagantt integration.

“The entire IDinsight team around the world thanks Asana for your continued support of our work!”
Jayson Wang, Global Operations Associate at IDinsight

Hope for Haiti

Hope for Haiti works to reduce poverty and improve the lives of Haitian citizens by partnering with Haitian community leaders across five key program areas: education, healthcare, infrastructure, access to clean water, and economic opportunity. With staff working on the ground in Haiti and in the United States, Asana has played a key role in keeping Hope for Haiti’s teams organized and on-task as they respond to COVID-19, regardless of where they’re physically working.

“Thanks to Asana’s generous donation of a free Business plan, our entire staff in Haiti and in the United States is able to work together on projects, share information, and keep track of their work in an easy and convenient way—despite being physically separated.”
Taylor Hebble, Marketing & Communications Manager at Hope for Haiti

For example, every Monday morning, the Hope for Haiti leadership team meets virtually to set and review weekly priorities, all of which are tracked in a shared project board in Asana. This transparency encourages collaboration across teams and holds everyone in the meeting accountable to achieving their weekly goals.

Asana has also helped the team remain nimble as priorities rapidly shift during these unprecedented times. The organization has a responsibility to quickly and clearly distribute accurate public health guidance across their social media networks and to the communities they serve in Haiti. Through Asana’s workflow capabilities, their program communications team is able to rapidly move from project conception to execution and distribution. This collaboration improvement has helped Hope for Haiti keep their partner communities healthy and informed about COVID-19.

FIEC – Federação das Industrias do Estado do Ceará

Operating out of Fortaleza, Brazil, FIEC represents the industrialists of the Ceará and supports the health and quality of life for workers. FIEC provides professional training, industry qualification standards, specialized technical and technological services, and innovation and executive education.

Through the work of the FIEC’s industries, including IEL, SESI, and SENAI, they are manufacturing aprons and face shields and donating them to the Ceará government free of charge.

“Our team of 47 has been 100% remote since March 18th, but with Asana, we’ve been able to continue our work and garner national media coverage as a result.”
Tadeu Leandro Vieira Jùnior, Gerente de Tecnologia da informação (IT Manager) at FIEC

In particular, the FIEC team has been able to:

BeeHuman!

BeeHuman! provides food and basic necessities for citizens of Bordeaux, France. During the month of Ramadan, their organization distributed over 800 hot meals and delivered groceries to 80 people, including children. Most of them were migrants, but some recipients were also struggling due to lack of resources and revenue during quarantine.

Now, they are moving forward and using Asana to track the families they support and the actions they can take to benefit each family. BeeHuman! volunteers use a standardized custom field to keep track of each family, which enables them to better assign volunteers to manage follow up.

“Our volunteers come from different backgrounds, and are not necessarily digital natives. It has been exciting to see how they take ownership of Asana and use it in their own ways, like commenting in two different languages.”
Youssef Nadiri, Co-Founder & President at BeeHuman!

At BeeHuman!, they’ve integrated Asana and Zapier to create Asana tasks directly from Typeform submissions for their grocery donation campaign. Then, volunteers can pick and assign themselves tasks as well as like, comment, and interact with others. Feeling connected in Asana is critical for the BeeHuman! volunteers, since they’re spread out over Bordeaux.

TPIRC – SoCal Food Allergy Institute

TPIRC is a nonprofit clinical care and research center that focuses on the development of cutting-edge individualized treatment protocols for rare and orphan diseases.

The TPIRC – SoCal Food Allergy Institute teams have used Asana to manage workflows across all of their business operations units, including project management, facilities management, philanthropy, human resources, and marketing. They have also implemented an OKR and KPI tracking system using a combination of List, Board, and Timeline Views.

Most importantly, the integration of Asana into their organization has allowed TPIRC – SoCal Food Allergy Institute to quickly do the following as it relates to COVID-19:

1. Deploy an on-site COVID-19 testing clinic for their patients, patient families, and employees so that all stakeholders can be safe at their facilities.

2. Create and implement an Infectious Disease Awareness Platform (IDAP) to significantly reduce transmission opportunities of COVID-19 at their facilities.

3. Regularly share COVID-19 thought leadership and education to their patients and the public.

“Thank you for your support of TPIRC and SoCal Food Allergy. We look forward to more wins as we continue unlocking the capabilities of Asana.”
Mark Mitchell, Director, Head of Business Operations at TPIRC – SoCal Food Allergy Institute

It doesn’t stop here—learn more about Asana for Nonprofits

We’re proud to support these nonprofits, and personally, I’m inspired by what they’ve been able to accomplish with Asana. Connection is the key to great collaboration—especially during periods of flux. And if there’s one thing these stories have highlighted it’s that the best actions are taken together.

Learn more about our Asana for Nonprofits program, or follow @asana on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn for more customer stories.

Add link to