Creating productivity and transparency

Crime Stoppers Queensland (QLD), run predominately by volunteers, is structured differently to its other counterparts. A board controls overall responsibility and five full time employees work in the state office – they are supported by over 500 volunteers state-wide who are organised into 29 area committees. With a large, dispersed non-metropolitan population, this model is effective for both South-East QLD and regional areas.

Crime Stoppers QLD CEO Trevor O’Hara identifies the use of volunteers to increase engagement within the community as the key factor in increasing volunteer numbers over the past two years from 300 to over 500.

As the popularity of online communication grows, more crimes are being reported online opposed to via the traditional 1800 phone number. Crime Stoppers have reacted to this trend by releasing a mobile app and are using social media to increase awareness of their brand amongst the public.

With the organisation’s growth and adoption of new technology on the frontline, Crime Stoppers QLD decided that its internal systems required an update. Introducing Calxa Premier for budgeting and reporting and MYOB AccountRight Live for general accounting has significantly improved internal productivity and provided more transparent reporting to the board.

Prior to implementation, the Crime Stoppers team were spending hours each month on board reports. These were printed from the organisation’s MYOB accounting software and manually typed into spreadsheets to produce a few basic reports. Due to time and resource limitations the board wasn’t provided with what they really needed to make informed decisions.

As a community volunteer organisation, Crime Stoppers QLD qualified for a donated copy of Calxa Premier through Connecting Up – a process O’Hara found simple and easy to follow. The results were almost instant once Calxa was up and running. The direct link to the MYOB file eliminated the manual data entry and the range and flexibility of the reports meant the board was provided with transparent data.

The new software meant producing the reports was easy and efficient. “Now I just open the software, update and print my reports. I don’t have to do all that manual processing – it saves us a few hours every month,” says O’Hara.

Recently Crime Stoppers QLD has embraced MYOB’s AccountRight Live to take their accounting to the cloud. Both the cloud-based accounting data and Calxa budgets directly link with each other, which was essential for Crime Stoppers QLD.

All NFPs are under pressure to improve efficiency and maximise results with resources available. At the same time, board members are demanding better reporting to improve transparency and accountability. With the help of Connecting Up, Calxa and MYOB, Crime Stoppers QLD has achieved these competing aims at minimal cost while improving both the efficiency and quality of reporting.