imcw.org for IMCW
Six Fish does much more than make web sites. Alden is a business analyst, project manager, consensus builder, tech wiz, hand-holder, budget hawk and at times group therapist. He has a hand in all the little things that get your project finished and everyone satisfied. And he brings a lot of experience in applying technology to the personal growth sector. Six Fish consistently over-delivers on already solid promises. They have my highest recommendation. -- Anne Green, IMCW Administrator.
I'll be honest, the bid Six Fish provided us was not the cheapest, but we felt Six Fish stood out from the pack in terms of their process and experience. Six Fish did an exhaustive analysis of our existing systems and processes and provided a detailed proposal and budget for the project. Throughout the development process, Alden consistently helped us achieve consensus to move forward and adapted to our changing needs. On completion, Six Fish delivered a system capable of much more than originally considered, yet still within the original budget. We are very satisfied with the results. -- Melissa Banks, IMCW President.
From the mission statement of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (IMCW), the organization aims to integrate and manifest wisdom and compassion in all aspects of life, for the benefit of all beings. A tall order not only for an organization, but for the web site that serves as their front door.
Yet through their combined offerings of classes, workshops, retreats, mentorships, community outreach and support, IMCW has become of the of the premier organizations of its kind in North America, offering thousands of events and serving tens of thousands of visitors each year.
Before contacting Six Fish, IMCW had spent years cobbling together web services such as email list management and online registration to keep up with their offerings and a customer management system to track donors and donations. Not only did the cost of these systems approach $5K/year, but they were difficult to use for admins and visitors alike and communicated poorly between them, forcing administrators to duplicate and synchonize information across these systems.
Top on their list was online registration. They needed something much better tailored to their members and offerings. Six Fish instigated a thorough analysis of their exisiting processes to identify the most crucial "pain points" -- where will we get the most bang for the buck if we change something? How can we reduce some of these ongoing costs?
Because Six Fish had previously developed a web site for SIMS -- an organization with a similar mission -- we were able to reuse and adapt much of the technology developed for that project, further lowering costs.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for IMCW is communicating their vast spectrum of offerings and events -- a single month can have 150 IMCW affiliated events. Six Fished helped IMCW design systems and procedures to automatically promote different kinds of events on different pages at different times, making best use of limited page space and maintaining a clean, uncluttered design while promoting the right event to the right person at the right time.
Add to this an on budget delivery, a fresh look and feel and a platform with room to grow and the accolades are beginning to stream in from visitors and administrators alike.
Click the images at right to visit the site.
