Featured Case Studies

The Anti-Cruelty Society, Chicago’s largest and oldest, open-admission humane society, received a grant from Humana Chicago Benefits, enabling them to upgrade their animal intake and tracking process. Great news if they had the infrastructure to support it. Unfortunately their 1933 office building, with a poor data infrastructure, presented a challenge. The renovation needed to implement traditional technology was going to cost up to $55,000. Mobile Internet access was the only affordable solution on which to deploy their new, and much needed intake/tracking system.

With CLEAR from Mobile Citizen, The Anti-Cruelty Society not only saved the organization thousands of dollars in unnecessary implementation and renovation costs, but added productivity worth more than $100,000 annually . Their six veterinarians, who are paid $50/hour, gained more than 1.5 hours of productive time each day due to the efficiency of real-time, mobile access to data and resources.

The benefits didn’t stop there. More than 30 veterinary assistants enjoy increased productivity because of this shared access. The Society’s Field service investigators, who are called upon to pick up unwanted animals and investigate complaints of cruelty, neglect and abuse, also benefit from access to mobile Internet, particularly in emergency situations. www.anticruelty.org

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For Concern for Health Options: Information, Care, and Education (CHOICE), a nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to accurate information and essential services concerning reproductive, sexual, and family health, technology is critical. It helps them meet critical community needs via two primary programs: Hotline Services and Community Education and Outreach.

CLEAR from Mobile Citizen not only saves CHOICE more than $600 dollars a year per account, it increases efficiency when conducting community outreach and enrollment and helps them meet the requirements of their business continuity or disaster recovery plan.

• Community Education and Outreach staff members can instantly complete online applications for enrollment in CHIP (health insurance for children and teens) at community-based sites in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area allowing staff to serve consumers at locations that are convenient for them. Additionally, a “CLEAR Spot” enables multiple staff members to share a connection at larger outreach/enrollment events.
• Because people in the community depend on the CHOICE hotlines, it is important they work in the event of an emergency or disaster that keeps staff from reaching the office to answer hotlines. CLEAR from Mobile Citizen provides a mobile Internet connection to their voice over IP (VOIP) phones allowing employees to work from remote location and have access to the same system features as if they were working in the office. www.CHOICE-phila.org

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 A large part of Crown Financial Ministries’ mission involves supporting leaders to apply and teach biblical financial principals to anyone seeking financial wisdom.  As a ministry, they extensively use electronic communication and online training tools.  CLEAR from Mobile Citizen enables their leaders to communicate and perform their duties mobilely and affordably by giving them mobile access in their outreach to other leaders, students and clients.   Additionally, the significant bandwidth benefits provided by 4G WiMAX service is particularly valuable as much of the training tools involve video PowerPoint or website references.  In addition to training, video testimonials are hugely impactful from a recruiting and development perspective. 

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GEM Children’s Foundation serves Salem families that have a child with a disability. The Foundation recently opened a resource center connecting parents to services that are available in the community.  The focus of the center is to provide information and training for parents to help them understand the complex care their children require.  In addition to offering a lending library, the Foundation is now able to offer free Internet for access to endless online resources.  CLEAR from Mobile Citizen allows this start-up nonprofit tocost-effectively provide this value-added resource without exhausting its own capital budget.

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Girl Scouts of Frontier Council needed wireless connectivity to promote their new online programs and boost interest in girl and adult volunteer membership at community events. No surprise that advanced technology tools were needed to reach young girls. One such program is Let Me Know or LMK (“let me know”), an online safety campaign created in partnership with Girl Scouts of the USA and Microsoft. The campaign includes an interactive Web site for girls, as well as an e-newsletter and Web site for adults. While at community events, Girl Scouts use CLEAR from Mobile Citizen to provide immediate access for girls and their families to gain a better understanding of what the site has to offer and sign up for the e-newsletter.

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The Healthy Schools Campaign (HSC) knows that healthy children make better learners. That is why they advocate for policies and programs that allow students, faculty and staff to learn and work in a healthy environment. For HSC, having reliable Internet access is mission critical.

For basic Internet access, they had 1 DSL line for years and it was vulnerable to outages. Even the shortest amount of downtime disrupted their business and resulted in decreased productivity and lost opportunities. So they set out to find a reliable back up. Adding a 2nd line was cost prohibitive so affordable and reliable mobile broadband with CLEAR from Mobile Citizen, saved them more than $5,000 on service. In addition to cost savings, the service provided the redundancy HSC needed for its Internet access for employees accessing cloud computing databases such as Google email, and their CRM databases: Salesforce.com,databank.com and events.org . The service also doubled reliability for inbound communications allowing employees access to HSC’s internal server.

Having 4G service also meant increased capacity or bandwidth. For an organization dependent on communicating news and best practices to its constituents, being able to make daily website changes -- including uploading and downloading of graphics and large files -- was important. Having the fastest Internet service available allows HSC to take full advantage of today’s latest digital mediums like video. www.healthyschoolscampaign.org

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• When Heart of Hope Ministries International needed mobile Internet capabilities to boost marketing and fundraising activities, they came to Mobile Citizen.
• Mobile broadband made Skype, an application allowing for phone calls over the Internet, possible, connecting fundraiser attendees with beneficiaries of their program – Romanian orphans, widows and families in desperate need of social services.
• Heart of Hope also uses mobile broadband in its outreach efforts with potential volunteers. With CLEAR service from Mobile Citizen, Heart of Hope staff can make a more personal connection with volunteers by having access to the organization's website, program information and success stories while meeting outside the office.

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As a champion for quality child care and early education, Illinois Action for Children relies on field staff to consult with more than 20,000 Chicagoland day care centers in the areas of healthcare, mental health and nutrition. For the first time ever, their nurses and field staff can spend their time driving from center to center administering valuable services instead of driving to and from the office to access files, do research or update records. With CLEAR from Mobile Citizen, field staff has instant access to the Internet as well as the organization’s email system and databases. The organization saw an immediate increase in productivity and is monitoring expense accounts expecting to see numbers go down. Also, day care centers enjoy better, more immediate service so everyone wins.

In addition to realizing these daily benefits, the Illinois Action for Children was opportunistic in identifying another innovative use for their CLEAR service from Mobile Citizen: empowering a temporary office. When the organization found itself in need of a short-term office space in order to act on and fully maximize a new grant award, CLEAR from Mobile Citizen was best solution for immediate Internet access. Within days, not weeks as with other more traditional alternatives, the Illinois Action for Children was able to quickly and cost-effectively bring 10 people on board to administer their two new programs: ‘Putting Illinois to Work’ and ‘Sprout’, a healthy food initiative for low-income school children. www.illinoisactionforchildren.org

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JOIN supports the efforts of homeless individuals and families in transition to get off the streets and into permanent housing.  Because of their mission, the majority of the work performed by JOIN’s outreach staff is done mobily, or outside the office.  With immediate access to a comprehensive online services database while doing their outreach, staff see big benefits:  time is maximized and data entry is more efficient.  The true benefactors of CLEAR from Mobile Citizen, however, are the 645+ people or 245 households JOIN supports.  Via JOIN’s Outreach & Retention Teams that bring mobile Internet service to them, these individuals have access to information they wouldn’t otherwise have:  job sites, online applications, access to bus routes for interview scheduling, listings and maps to nearby post offices, grocery stories or a menu of other important services. 

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Believing that every child deserves a safe and supportive place to grow, Ronald McDonald House Charities® (RMHC®) of Greater Las Vegas creates and supports programs that directly improve the health, education and well-being of children in their community. And they do that thanks to a very dedicated and an increasingly mobile staff.  Families and children staying at the Ronald McDonald House can be extremely susceptible to illness, and as a result they have a very strict health policy for staff -- stay home if you’re sick to help prevent transmission and protect the families in the House. CLEAR from Mobile Citizen gives them the ability to have a ‘mobile office’ and necessary Internet access ensuring staffers have the same access to applications as they had in the office and enabling them to work productively off-site.  In addition to benefitting from ongoing productivity of their staff, RMHC of Greater Las Vegas will be able to extend mobile broadband benefits to their families so they can connect with loved ones back home, whether they are at the House or in a hospital caring for their child. 

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Nevada Child Seekers works on behalf of missing and exploited children, working as both an advocate as well as assisting in prevention and location efforts.  The organization’s Emergency Volunteer Search Force, a volunteer group activated by law enforcement when a child or adult with diminished capacity has gone missing, is mobile by nature.   CLEAR from Mobile Citizen gives volunteers who perform ground searches and do knock and talks around the neighborhood where a child has disappeared, the ability to send and receive new information such as updated photographs during the search. In addition to using affordable mobile broadband to support these very important community outreach efforts, Nevada Child Seekers uses the service for its annual Dash & Stroll Race4Kids in order to make the event day participant registration process more efficient, and allow onsite access to donation reports. 

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Most for profit businesses take Internet access for granted.  It’s just a part of doing business.  That is not the case for many nonprofits on limited budgets.  Take On-the-Move Community Integration, a non-profit organization helping adults with developmental disabilities access and participate in meaningful activities, allowing them to become more involved in their communities.  Before CLEAR from Mobile Citizen, the executive director’s bedroom doubled as an office because tapping into Internet access at home was the only cost-effective solution for their organization.  Now On-the-Move Community Integration’s most basic business applications – email, Internet research and accessing valuable community resources – are not only affordable, but available at the office and when they are needed.  On-the-Move Community Integration staff, volunteers and clients win.  In the future, the organization plans to use CLEAR from Mobile Citizen to expand its Internet-based applications with a website for online donations and social networking sites. 

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The Oregon Health & Science University Foundation raises support to enable OHSU to improve the health and quality of life for all Oregonians.  CLEAR from Mobile Citizen allows the foundation’s development officers to take Raiser’s Edge, their contact management application, with them on the road.  Donor history is instantly accessible, gifts are noted immediately, data entry happens only once and errors caused by double-entry are avoided.  Fundraising is more efficient. 

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What is three months of productivity worth when it means getting and optimizing a grant? Philadelphia FIGHT, an AIDS service organization, signed up for CLEAR from Mobile Citizen and found out. The organization was awarded a grant for a new prison program providing counseling services to inmates, but it had to be utilized in a certain timeframe. This new program required FIGHT open a new location where it was going to take three months to get traditional Internet service, a time frame that put the grant funding at risk. High-speed mobile Internet access got them in business in just days and erased any questions of not being able to accept the grant.
Although basic Internet access was the initial reason, FIGHT discovered multiple ways to use CLEAR from Mobile Citizen to enable mobility and increase productivity in fulfilling its mission:

• Mobile staffers and program directors working in remote locations remained connected to headquarters.
• Employees who often presented at AIDS-related summits had easy Internet access on-site, not to mention smooth downloading capabilities for files needed for their presentations.
• Clinic staff were happy to hear that mobile Internet would insure that basic clinic services would continue in a disaster if power or landline service was lost.

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In just a few short months, the Philadelphia Public School Notebook program has experienced numerous benefits, not to mention significant results, simply by giving each of its five employees 4G high speed mobile Internet access via CLEAR service from Mobile Citizen. As an organization dedicated to promoting informed involvement in local public schools:

• Notebook bloggers are now able to instantly report from School Reform Commission (like Philadelphia's school board) meetings. Their bloggers are often the first to break news which has helped to double web traffic.
• Employees get more done by adding nearly 10 hours a month or more than 100 hours of productive telecommuting time a year.
• Event staff saw a jump in membership after they brought a laptop, equipped with CLEAR service from Mobile Citizen, to capture registrations on the spot. This year's event resulted in 7 new members or $300 in additional revenue, which was exceeded organizer's expectations for a first try at on-the-spot membership sign ups.

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Special Olympics Oregon is on a mission to end the use of the word ‘retard.’ The organization serving more than 7,000 people with intellectual disabilities across the state is also helping advance global awareness of the hurtful and demeaning use of the word via its local R-Word campaigns at Special Olympics Oregon Polar Plunge events.  CLEAR from Mobile Citizen has been instrumental in its efforts to get youth involved in awareness activities and events.  Currently, Special Olympics Oregon staffers and volunteers are promoting this campaign by making presentations at area high schools.  Mobile Internet access allows high school students to register online, immediately make the pledge to not use the R-word and earn the right to plunge into the river to raise money for Special Olympics Oregon athletes. 

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City View Charter is a small K-8 public charter school in Hillsboro, Oregon, with an enrollment of over 160 students. All of the school's state testing is done by computer, and staff are dependent on reliable Internet access for research and communications.

So in 2008 when the school needed to provide Internet access for its 12+ staff members, 3 classrooms and a 22-station computer lab, they did what many schools do and looked to a T-1 connection to provide the access they needed. Unfortunately the T-1's limited bandwidth and high cost quickly had school leaders searching for alternatives.

After putting CLEAR from Mobile Citizen through a 3 week trial to insure reliability, City View Charter School cancelled its T-1 connection. CLEAR from Mobile Citizen gave the school speeds twice as fast as their T-1 connection and eliminated installation headaches and costs. Without significant construction or installation expenses, the school immediately saved more than $3,000. Additionally, the school benefits from affordable mobile broadband from Mobile Citizen, saving over $350 a month on Internet costs enabling City View to invest in other improvements in the lab in the future.

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