Alianza NORCO: Strengthening Operations Infrastructure for a Legal and Healthcare Services Organization
Organization Size: Small: ($1 million – $5 million)
Summary
An internal infrastructure initiative that helped a legal and healthcare organization improve staffing visibility, grant management, program coordination, and decision-making across geographically dispersed teams.
The Hurdle
Alianza NORCO, a growing legal services and healthcare navigation organization, faced increasing complexity as its programs, funding streams, and service coverage area expanded. Services were delivered across multiple locations, with staff working in offices, community settings, and the field. Because leadership and frontline staff were not always in the same location, it became harder to maintain coordination of workloads, service delivery, and day-to-day operations.
Alianza NORCO provides a wide range of services, including legal navigation, healthcare access support, advocacy, case management, and direct client assistance. Many clients require support from multiple programs simultaneously, making it difficult to accurately track staff time, service usage, and the true cost of delivering services.
Managing grants also presented challenges. Funding came from multiple sources, each with its own requirements, reporting expectations, timelines, and compliance obligations. Leadership needed better tools to track spending, monitor grant performance, and ensure compliance with reporting requirements.
Because Alianza NORCO serves vulnerable populations, data management required strong security practices while still allowing staff to access the information they needed. Existing tracking systems were spread across multiple tools and processes, creating extra administrative work, increasing the risk of errors, and making it difficult to quickly generate accurate reports.
Leadership also wanted better information to support planning and decision-making. They needed a clearer understanding of how staff time was being used, which services required the most resources, and where operational inefficiencies existed. Without that information, it was difficult to make informed decisions about staffing, technology investments, and future program development.
Finally, staff needed a central place to manage responsibilities, deadlines, and ongoing activities across teams. Program coordination often depended on informal communication, creating the risk of missed tasks and inconsistent follow-through. Alianza NORCO wanted a practical system that would improve coordination and accountability without creating additional administrative burden.
The Answer
Ivanhoe Development worked with Alianza NORCO to create and implement a flexible, easy-to-use internal infrastructure system to improve visibility, coordination, and decision-making. The focus was on building tools that were accessible across locations and easy to incorporate into daily operations.
The project introduced two primary tools: a Program Management Hub and a Staff Time Tracking System. While a variety of project management tools and software were investigated, both tools were eventually built in Google Sheets. This determination was made based on the cost-effectiveness of the Google Suite and its ease of use for staff members who are often out in the field using cell phones or tablets.
Program Management Hub
The Program Management Hub serves as a centralized location for program coordination, grant management, and organizational reporting. Key components include:
Outcomes Dashboard
Staff can record both quantitative and qualitative outputs and outcomes across programs. This creates a consistent reporting process across programs and funding sources.
Program Schedule
A shared calendar allows staff and leadership to assign tasks, track deadlines, and monitor progress. This improves coordination across teams and helps maintain service continuity.
Grant Spend-Down Tracker
Staff and leadership can monitor expenditures by funding source, helping ensure grant funds are used appropriately and reducing the risk of duplicate allocations.
Grant Summary Dashboard
Key information for each grant, such as funding amounts, grant periods, required activities, and expected outcomes, is stored in one place, providing a clear overview of funding obligations.
Staff Time Tracking System
The Staff Time Tracking System gives leadership a clearer understanding of staff utilization, service delivery patterns, and organizational capacity. Built-in dashboards and reporting tools allow leadership to analyze how staff time is allocated across programs and activities.
The system helps the organization:
Identify opportunities to improve efficiency
Detect service delivery bottlenecks
Understand the true cost of services
Balance workloads across staff
Forecast changes in community demand
Evaluate opportunities for automation and technology improvements
Together, these systems provide leadership with real-time information to support daily operations and long-term planning. Leadership can now identify whether specific tasks should be reassigned to improve efficiency, uncover bottlenecks in service delivery, measure the true cost of services, reduce uneven staff workloads, forecast changing community demand, and identify opportunities for automation or new technology investments.
By improving coordination and data access, Alianza NORCO is better positioned to make informed strategic decisions and grow sustainably while continuing to provide high-quality services to the community.
