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The Hitachi Foundation: Yoshiyama Awards System |
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Sector
Foundations, NGO
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Partners
IBM, Microsoft
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Solution
Online Awards Process, Online Review Process, Workflow, Document Management, Website
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Technology
SQL-Server, ODBC, .NET, Domino, Javascript, HTML, GIFTS
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The
Hitachi Foundation is a philanthropic organization established by Hitachi, Ltd. in 1985. Each year, the Foundation presents the
Yoshiyama award for exemplary community service to ten high school
seniors from around the United States, based on their community service
activities.
The paper-based process of nominating a candidate
and then inspecting those candidates through rounds – first with
external and then internal reviewers – proved to be an expensive,
arduous process for the Foundation.
MadWolf Technologies was
asked to submit a plan for an improved web-based process. The
requirements of this process allow nominators to enter any number of
potential candidates, save those candidate nomination forms online
pending completion, and finally individually submit those candidates' nominations and their supporting documents through the system.
The
submitted nomination forms with supporting documents are then grouped
and ranked, and in pools of ten are dropped into online reviewer
mailboxes so that authenticated reviewers can complete a reviewer
multi-level ranking form for each nominee. The grouping program process
assures that each nominee is reviewed by at least two reviewers. At the end
of the review process, additional ranking algorithms are used to
roll up the quantifiable data and allow internal staff to select a
group for final review.
At any time during this and subsequent
processing, the internal staff and final reviewers can examine the
entire nomination form, any of the reviewers’ rankings or qualified
forms, or additional background biographical reports generated by
internal staff. This process then moves to a round of online reviews by
final reviewers. Final reviewers also receive a CD with instructions
and all available nominee data, presented in logical groupings with
internal navigation. As part of our maintenance of the Yoshiyama
system, MadWolf produces and distributes these CDs.
All contact data
on nominators, reviewers and award winners is moved to a SQL-based
contacts database that is subsequently used to track and acknowledge
the efforts of the candidates as well as preserve pools of potential
future award participants. Data collected on the award winners is
further migrated to a SQL-based disbursement system. Since most of
these winners have been nominated without their knowledge, they are very pleasantly surprised by the arrival
of their cash award.
To help with
transitioning to the web-based process, during the first year of
operation the Yoshiyama system also supported scanning and
incorporating of hardcopy submissions into the database back-end.
In
general, the system handles about 1,000 nominations per year and
requires approximately 50 reviewers. Despite its initial cost, the system has
proven to be very cost-effective for The Hitachi
Foundation—particularly with respect to staff efforts, paper waste and
postage. The system is well engineered, as indicated by the decrease
in annual maintenance charges.
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