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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