Exploring Office 365's Boundless Capacity with SCA Philippines

Since 1936, the Student Catholic Action of the Philippines (SCAP) has annually trained over 5,000 high school and college students all over the Philippines to become leaders educated in good governance, education and spirituality to name a few.

With a vast network but with only a staff of three, SCAP’s admin officer, Frence Boiser, shares how difficult it was for them to coordinate with their volunteers and member archdioceses on a regular basis. It was when he explored Office 365 for Nonprofits that SCAP managed to resolve the challenges in communication and collaboration.

Doing it on your own was the theme of Frence and SCAP’s entire experience with Office 365. As an accidental techie in their organization and with no actual ICT training at all, it was Frence himself who explored the vast features of Office 365, and implemented it in their office; relying only on Office 365 support instructions and other online resources such as webinars and articles.

What do they have today? Frence shares that Office 365 has taken their communication systems and processes to an entirely different level. Utilizing SharePoint in a variety of ways, Frence eagerly shares how SCAP has found itself a new internal portal for collaboration and internal communication, a new website and even an online repository of files, through the use of that single aspect of Office 365 alone.

With a focus on their internal portal made through SharePoint, SCAP’s members can now easily collaborate on a single document in real time, share files easily and even have their own internal website where they can communicate and post updates for their networks. In addition, they also developed their own customized log in page designed especially for SCAP, through SharePoint alone!

In addition to that, with its three members all based in entirely different provinces regularly, Frence eagerly shares how Skype for Business has helped them cut travel costs significantly by simply holding online conferences instead. To top that, Skype for Business’ integration with OneNote also allowed them to jot down notes and share ideas easily while holding these online conferences.

Focusing next on its Yammer features, SCAP has now successfully launched a social collaboration platform to help them coordinate and communicate volunteer & community storiesamong themselves. Yet again adding another entry to the ever growing list of things they've now been able to do through Office 365. But then again, what's even more amazing is that they've made all of this possible through an Office 365 E1 subscription, a plan that's entirely free for nonprofits!

With their entire Office 365 experience being just about half a year old, the amount of progress SCAP has made with Office 365 and the convenience and efficiency that it has brought them is just awe-inspiring. In summarizing their entire experience, Frence shares “Office 365 for Nonprofit[s] has transformed our ministry work with faster and easier interaction among our national staff, coordinators and members wherever we are. I am personally excited how cloud solutions can support more of our advocacies on social action in the future”

Want to learn more about the Student Catholic Action of the Phillippines? Feel free to visit their website at www.scaphilippines.org

or you can also like them at Facebook at fb.com/scaphilippines.