Charlotte Crossroads Collaboration
Crossroads Charlotte selected NPower Charlotte Region to create the program management and collaboration platform for its countywide expansion.
Challenge
Crossroads Charlotte engages organizations, institutions and individuals in dialogue to understand and intentionally work toward an equitable and inclusive future for the people of Charlotte, North Carolina. Success in Charlotte lead to the program's county-wide expansion, but they needed a way to manage the information "locked away" in the inboxes and local file storage of their geographically and organizationally distributed members.
Crossroads came to NPower Charlotte Region for help. NPower understood their situation and created a program management and collaboration platform that would assemble the islands of information into a single online location.
Solution
NPower use hosted Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services version 3.0 to develop a program management portal. This portal acts as the nucleus of file and information sharing across all organizations and individuals working with Crossroads, making documents, calendars, contacts, project status information and image libraries easily available to its dispursed members.
NPower also advised Crossroads on the use of social media to take the dialogue to the public.
"Community Building Initiative (CBI) is thrilled to continue its partnership with NPower to enhance communications and programming tools for the Foundation For The Carolinas' Crossroads Charlotte project," said Dianne English, Executive Director, Community Building Initiative.
Impact
By utilizing the collaboration and document management features inherent in SharePoint, Crossroads Charlotte is engaging more people in the county-wide expansion of dialogue on issues of inclusion and equity. In turn, the Charlotte region is beginning to widen the participation of community neighborhoods, associations and individual citizens in the intentional shaping of the region's future as an inclusive community and great place to live, learn and work.
About the Nonprofit
Crossroads Charlotte is a special initiative of Foundation For The Carolinas and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, managed by the Community Building Initiative, to examine possible futures described in four scenarios and to provide opportunity for organizations, institutions and individuals to take action.
The Crossroads Charlotte scenarios were written in response to a core question: What course will Charlotte-Mecklenburg chart for all its residents over the next ten years as we deal with issues of access, equity, inclusion and trust in the social, political, economic and cultural life of the community? This question provided the basis for a look into the future based on values that are fundamental to the community's future vitality.
