How the National Development Council aids underserved communities
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Focus on: Empower Employees, Optimize Operations |
Since 1969, the National Development Council has worked to increase investment capital in low-income communities. By linking local leaders with creative financing, partnering with local banks, and providing guidance for emerging entrepreneurs, the non-profit helps underserved communities provide affordable housing, create jobs, and establish the social infrastructure necessary for them to grow and thrive in the future. Every day, NDC employees across the US reach out to local leaders, government officials, and banks in these high-need areas to provide the technical know-how and necessary funds for long-term community and economic development.
In nearly five decades, NDC helped improve the lives of millions of people, NDC has loaned more than $220 million to over 580 small businesses, trained 70,000 economic and housing development finance partners, raised over $681 million in equity from private investors to create over 10,658 housing units, financed over $2.6 billion of social infrastructure development, financed 86 projects using New Markets Tax Credits and created and retained over 50,000 jobs in the process.1
“Our work is focused on creating jobs, building homes, and supporting communities,” says CTO Antonio Palumbo. “By bringing together technical know-how and capital for economic investment, we provide opportunities to residents in America’s most underserved areas.”
As NDC continued to grow, they quickly realized that they lacked the tools and resources to not only efficiently communicate with their local partners but to activate their own on-site personnel. With 100 employees operating out of New York City, Seattle, Washington D.C., Cleveland, and Cincinnati, the NDC struggled to manage the necessary technology to inform and empower their partners and employees and were burning through capital in the process. That’s why, in 2012, the NDC hired Palumbo—to jumpstart its digital transformation.
Optimizing for the futureRoughly 60% of NDC employees either work from home or travel regularly. Traditionally, that meant colleagues depended on remote desktops via a virtual machine (VM) environment and a managed services provider (MSP)-run Exchange network to stay up-to-date and in touch with their local partners. Together, these services were not only confusing but also expensive. The MSP alone ran $40,000 per month, while the MSP solution became more and more expensive as the NDC partner network continued to grow.
Upon joining the New York office, Palumbo was quick to implement Microsoft solutions that would streamline processes and save money.
“We didn’t want to have an in-house file directory or file server. We didn’t want to have a big IT team here. We wanted to leverage Microsoft because they already have the infrastructure,” he explains. “It isn’t feasible to have onsite servers in New York City.”
Since Palumbo’s hiring, the NDC has shifted its technological infrastructure to embrace Microsoft solutions like Office 365, Azure, and Windows 10—a move that has saved the NPO over 80% of its previous IT costs, fortified security, and streamlined employee communications without creating headaches.
Creating peace of mind and opportunity“Migration to Exchange Online was easy,” Palumbo recalls. NDC employees found all their old emails in their new mailbox and had a one-time setup process clearly spelled out to keep migration simple. Since the transition, the NDC has adopted SharePoint and Skype for Business to drive collaboration and manage schedules, while the security and compliance features within Office 365 have helped it thwart potential data breaches and stay ahead of compliance regulations.
“We have to answer to major banks that have relationships with us because they’re supposed to lend money out to their communities,” Palumbo says. “The banks want to make sure the systems we have in place are PCI and HIPAA compliant, and when they hear we have Office 365, that checks all the boxes on their list.”
Palumbo and his colleagues anticipate moving more tools to the cloud in the coming months. “We are not a huge company with endless resources, but are big enough that we need something robust,” he explains.
As the NDC continues to expand and pursue its mission of empowering growth across the country, Azure is enabling the organization to scale affordably and reach and engage new partners.
“At the end of the day, we want to give as much support to our client communities and partners as possible,” Palumbo says. “Being that our organization is spread out across the US, the internal challenge has always been communicating and sharing information between colleagues. Microsoft makes that part of our work much easier.”
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