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iMeet® Central is a critical collaborative and organizational tool for the nonprofit leader in the fight for human rights

/ CASE STUDY

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

H I G H L I G H T S THE PROBLEMAmnesty International USA has a simple mission with a complex workflow behind it. To tell the stories of people whose human rights are in jeopardy, the organization—the largest grassroots human rights organization in the world—brings numerous experts into its approvals process. Friction arose when stakeholders had inconsistent access to key documents and squandered time searching for current drafts and important information buried in old email threads.

THE SOLUTION iMeet Central is the “repository of things that matter” for Amnesty’s digital and strategic communications department. Using iMeet Central’s task management, the team tracks its communications from first draft through production to final approval, while also providing a single, shared location for all updates connected to its cases and causes.

THE RESULTSAmnesty credits iMeet Central with eliminating delays in the approvals process, saving hours each day previously devoted to chasing after updates and searching for information. In addition to enhancing internal collaboration, iMeet Central inspires new ways of working more efficiently with the organization’s vendors.

WHAT’S AT STAKE?

This is a story about how iMeet Central helps

nonprofits like Amnesty International tell their

own stories more effectively. It’s a story about

what drives and inspires us professionally—and

how to spend more time doing those things and

less time bogged down by inefficient workflows

and tedious administrative work.

It’s a story about a Saudi Arabian blogger named

Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in prison and

1,000 lashes for running a website dedicated

to social and political debate. It’s a story of a

grassroots organization trying to raise awareness

and drive action to protect Badawi’s rights—and

the rights of countless other victims of injustice

around the globe.

It’s a story about people who want to help

and who don’t have any time to waste.

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COLLABORATIVE STORYTELLING

Behind every Amnesty press release

or initiative to raise signatures for a

petition: a large network of stakeholders

and experts, all tasked with crafting

compelling calls to action while

accurately reporting on the cases the

organization is seeking to publicize.

“In the case of Raif Badawi, when we want

to communicate something outwardly

about his case, it doesn’t start with

putting one communication out into the

universe,” says Shiloh Stark, Amnesty

International USA’s senior director

of online growth and cultivation. “It

actually starts with research and country

advocacy strategy from our experts on

Saudi Arabia and from our Individuals

at Risk campaigners. Our digital and

When speed and transparency are critical, you can’t afford to work out of your inbox.

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“There are a lot of eyes that see these

pieces before they go out, so we

can be sure that our reputation for

accuracy, impartiality and integrity—

which is the basis upon which we do all

our work—is upheld 100%,” says Stark.

Eventually, the copy is put into

production and the communication

is released into the world—but it

also remains within iMeet Central,

awaiting any future updates.

When a development occurs, the

communications team can easily get

back up to speed.

strategic communications team will

then draft a message to tell that story

to our online activists. We share that

internally in iMeet Central to get peer

feedback on whether we’re telling the

story in the most compelling way to

help people understand what’s really

at stake for this individual. And then

we will seek approvals.”

Stark and his team then track the

document as it winds its way through

the approval process, attracting

feedback from international

colleagues, advocacy directors and

policy directors. Sometimes an

approver or reviewer isn’t an iMeet

Central user, so the asset takes a

“hiatus” before being uploaded back

into iMeet Central with all of the

tracked changes.

“ iMeet Central is the critical organizational tool that our department uses.”

Shiloh Stark / senior director / Amnesty International USA

“It will always live within iMeet Central,”

says Stark. “We can easily reference

the work we’ve already done, and

build on that so there’s no delay or

friction in us communicating out what

the next step is for our activists. iMeet

Central is the critical organizational

tool that our department uses to

organize this work.”

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FREEDOM FROM INBOXES AND NETWORK DRIVES

Whether they’re working for a nonprofit

organization or a profit-thirsty corporation,

today’s employees don’t want to be tethered—

to desks, to unwieldy technology, to inflexible

schedules, and so on.

“iMeet Central untethers our work,” Stark says.

“You’re able to organize your work and really

collaborate with other people using the various

tools available in iMeet Central.”

His team no longer has to log into a VPN or rely

on shared network drives in order to gain access

to key documents. Files are easily accessed and

shared from any device, whether in-office or on-

the-go. Stark also notes a reduction in time spent

digging through unorganized email inboxes.

“iMeet Central offers a way to create really quick

and easy continuity,” he says. “It’s the repository

of things that matter.”

Organized workspaces provide easy, reliable file access for collaborators around the globe.

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A NEW WAY OF COLLABORATING WITH VENDORS

Stark’s team mostly uses their iMeet Central

workspaces for internal collaboration, but

they’ve also opened up several workspaces

to outside vendors, as a means of centralizing

communication and keeping action items and

important information from being lost in the

archives. As a result, they’ve started spotting

opportunities to gain more visibility into product

roadmaps and improve how these vendors are

servicing the organization.

“We’ll create a task for them in iMeet Central,

associate a milestone with it, and then connect

every month or two to see where they are in

their roadmap and how they’re stacking up to our

needs,” says Stark. “That’s been incredibly useful

as well.”

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“ The level of efficiency that iMeet Central brings demonstrates its ROI.”

Shiloh Stark, senior director, Amnesty International USA

ROI: DOING “THE MATH OF WASTED TIME”

What’s the value of smarter

collaboration and enhanced efficiency?

We’ve previously showcased customers

who have linked revenue growth and

production savings to iMeet Central. For

Stark and Amnesty, and presumably

with many nonprofits, the math looks a

little different.

“The level of efficiency that iMeet Central

brings demonstrates its return on

investment,” he says, noting that the

organization re-evaluates the solution

each year prior to renewing its contract.

“When you rely solely on email or

network drives or some mix-and-match

solution where you can’t see versioning

and comments in a single place, when

you can’t find the file someone emailed

you a year and a half ago, all of those

moments of friction add up to hours

of the day that people spend chasing

things down or losing track of things.”

“I am intensely aware of wasted time,” he

continues. “I know my salary and the

salaries on my staff; when you actually

do the math of that wasted time, it adds

up very, very quickly. So if we can have

a tool that eliminates that friction and

organizes the chaos, the value to the

organization can be directly measured

against the salary cost of your staff,

the opportunity cost of your staff and

volunteers, and what you could be doing

if you weren’t spending half the day

chasing down five emails from various

stretches of time ago.”

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MORE TIME FOR WHAT MATTERS

“I love coming to work here,” Stark says, even

though devoting four and a half years to the

Amnesty communications team, as he’s done,

is to immerse oneself in “the stories of people

facing really difficult circumstances.”

“Our campaigns create a lot of positive movement,

so that really keeps you going,” he says. “When you

see that you’ve written letters and then you see

that person has been freed, that’s really gratifying.”

In the case of Raif Badawi, Amnesty is a key driver

in the “huge international outcry” in support of

Badawi’s release from custody and in support of

freedom of expression everywhere. By creating an

approvals workflow that hinges on collaboration

and transparency, Stark and his team are able

to avoid unnecessary production delays and

unhappy surprises, thus getting their urgent

messages out to the world as quickly as possible.

At iMeet Central, we’re proud to be helping

Amnesty International USA—and a long list of

nonprofits—find new ways to focus on the life-

changing work they do so well.

“ Business as usual” doesn’t have to include friction and chaos.

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Shiloh Starksenior directorAmnesty International USA

HERE ARE THREE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT iMEET CENTRAL...

01/Document versioning. Number one is definitely

the versioning of

documents and being

able to recover any past

version of a document

you’re interested in.

02/Subscriptions and commenting. You can be subscribed

to a document and

then be notified any

time anyone has

anything to add or

say about it.

03/Very robust task management. You can assign

yourself and your team

tasks, be really clear

about deadlines and

dependencies, and see

those deadlines and

dependencies mapped

out over the course of a

full project.

GET INVOLVED WITH AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Want to help make a difference?

Visit Amnesty International USA’s website

for more information on the issues, cases and

campaigns they’re tackling around the world.

To learn more about Raif Badawi, see the

“Flogged for Blogging” page on Amnesty’s site.

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ABOUT iMEET CENTRAL

iMeet Central helps people work together in ways they never

imagined possible.

Our collaboration platform connects people and information in

the cloud, making it possible to share files, combine knowledge,

inspire ideas, manage projects and more.

More than 750,000 users worldwide use iMeet Central everyday.

Key customers include CBS, MLB.com, BBDO, Pizza Hut, Amazon,

Sesame Workshop, Pinkberry, the Humane Society of the United

States, CareerBuilder, Javelin Marketing Group, Workday and more.

iMeet Central is a PGi product.

/ 866 900 7646 / imeetcentral.com