How SAM helped Alaska Adoption Services secure two major grants
Alaska Adoption Services
Alaska Adoption Services is a nonprofit organization founded in 2019 that focuses primarily on domestic infant adoption across the state of Alaska. At the time, they were the only agency focusing on domestic adoption in the state. The founders, Tami Watson and Victoria Ross, recognized a need for a local agency that helped keep Alaskan babies in-state through domestic adoptions.
Since 2019, Alaska Adoption Services has grown and been able to expand its services through the receipt of two significant grants. The first grant is the Adoption and Guardianship Home Studies for Resource Families Grant, awarded by the state, allowing Alaska Adoption Services to do home studies for foster care children moving towards adoption or guardianship. With the help of this grant, they do around 360 home studies a year for all of Alaska.
The second major grant they received is the Wendy's Wonderful Kids Grant from the Dave Thomas Foundation. Through this grant, they hired a recruiter who works with referrals from the state to help children and youth find permanency through adoption.
In addition to the work and expansion they were able to complete through these grants, they opened a community diaper pantry that helps families in and around Anchorage by providing children with 50 diapers a month and a pack of wipes.
The Challenge
The majority of Alaska Adoption Services' growth was made possible through funding from grants they received. The agency needed a software solution that helped them secure grant funding to be able to launch these new programs and initiatives while keeping costs low and still effectively serving their clients. With the growth in the number of clients, organizing, tracking, and distributing data accurately and efficiently became difficult through paperwork and spreadsheets, as they are unreliable and unscalable.
Additionally, the majority of the staff members who work for the agency are contractors who don’t work in their offices and are out in the field in various locations. They needed a software system that was easy to use and simple enough to be trained on without direct guidance.
As a brand-new organization, Alaska Adoption Services's funding options were limited. They needed a system that worked within their budget but met the specific needs and requirements of an adoption agency.
The Results
Alaska Adoption Services discovered SAM, the powerful adoption agency and foster care software designed by InReach Solutions specifically to support adoption work by social work organizations. SAM checked all the boxes and met the specific needs of the agency, allowing them to receive the grants and funding needed to meet their expansion goals.
Alaska Adoption Services has used SAM to grow by using:
Streamlined Data Entry: SAM took the burden off social workers by automating key processes, eliminating manual data entry, and reducing errors.
Customized Reporting: A large part of the grant request process involves providing detailed custom reports to show qualifications to receive the grants. After receiving the grants, Alaska Adoption Services still has to provide reports to show how they are using the grant funding and the impact they are making, which includes a lot of data. SAM’s reporting capabilities make the process faster and easier for the agency.
Digital Home Study Process: In order to receive the state grant to perform home studies, Alaska Adoption Services needed to show they were capable of organizing and tracking home study data efficiently. SAM allows agencies to transition their data into a digital format by uploading forms and using checklists that families could fill out online, making the process easier for the agency, the state, and the family.
Inventory Management: Alaska Adoption Services runs a community diaper pantry. SAM made the process of keeping track of available inventory much easier. The agency also needed a way to track how many diapers a family received per month, how many families they were serving, and duplicated vs. unduplicated requests. Being able to customize lists and reports for this service has been integral in keeping them organized and anticipating needs.
Customizable Forms: The ability to transfer all records from paper forms to online forms using SAM’s custom form builder has allowed Alaska Adoption Services to transition to digital case management, streamlining their case study process and increasing accuracy and efficiency.What Children of the World says about their experience partnering with SAM
The Results
InReach Solutions has created software, SAM, tailored specifically to support the unmet needs of social workers in adoption agencies. Alaska Adoption Services has reaped the benefits of this software by applying for two major grants that have allowed it to expand from a small two-person office managing domestic infant adoptions to a staff of 6 full-time employees and 24 contractors performing adoptions, home studies, and community outreach.
SAM allowed Alaska Adoption Services to grow through an easy-to-use/learn platform that provided streamlined data reporting, inventory management, and case note organization at a cost-effective price point. This was a crucial requirement for a brand-new agency that did not have the funding resources of larger, more established agencies.
The team at Alaska Adoption Services has a direct relationship with Steffany from InReach Solutions, who helps them make the best use of the SAM software for their specific needs. Alaska Adoption Services also provides Steffany with constructive feedback and suggestions for future feature integrations that would be useful to adoption agencies. The continued partnership with InReach Solutions and Alaska Adoption Services has enabled both companies to improve themselves and grow.
