What About The Men?

Organization Information:

Organization Name:
M.E.N.S. Wear, Inc. (Making Employment the Next Step)
City & State:
Atlanta, 
Georgia
Organization Website:
http://www.menswearinc.org
Organization's Mission Statement

It is our mission to provide a continuum of life skills, economic and entrepreneurship assistance to men and male youth in the greater Atlanta area with barriers to accessing resources in order to enhance their economic condition and community.

Submission Information

Impact Essay

M.E.N.S. Wear, Inc. (Making Employment the Next Step) is an Atlanta-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides professional wardrobe services, advocacy, and life skills and employment readiness training/coaching, and computer technology training to hard-to-employ males, youth through adult, residing throughout the metropolitan Atlanta area. Founded in 2003, M.E.N.S. Wear, Inc. (MWI) has developed a core service and program module that helps unemployed individuals overcome existing barriers to social and vocational mainstreaming. Since opening our doors in 2003, when it came to technology, MWI was not able to operate efficiently. Everything was done using paper documents. MWI needed and wanted a technology infrastructure in place that could help achieve stability and a more efficient way to mange documents and communicate to clients and community partners. However, early this year, MWI was introduced to Microsoft Office Small Business. With the awesome tools that Microsoft Office Small Business has made available to small business, MWI has been able to utilize these tools to develop a solid technology foundation to communicate to clients, community partners, and board members. Below is an in-depth summary of how MWI utilizes Microsoft Office Small Business tools to enable better services and programs to enhance the quality of service to our programs. Microsoft Office Live:

  • Hosted web presence – MWI has developed a website (hosted by Microsoft Office Live) in order to have a web presence.
  • Free email accounts – Each board member of MWI has an email address ending with @menswearinc.org. This capability has allowed MWI to have a more professional approach to market the organization. In addition, board members have a sense of pride and respect for their volunteer efforts with MWI.
  • Business processing tools – Microsoft Office Live has allowed MWI to develop several business processing tools for computer partners to utilize on-line versus completing numerous amounts of paperwork. For example, MWI has developed an online Partner Application for all interested agencies that would like to partner with MWI. Once an application has been submitted on-line, an email is sent to the staff for review for approval. Once a partnership has been established, the partner can now go on-line to complete referrals forms for each client that they would like to refer to MWI. This tool saves MWI and the partner time to better service clients. In addition it allows MWI the capability to store, sort, and track information with the click of a button!
  • Bookstore Site – MWI has developed an on-line bookstore through Microsoft Office Live. The on-line bookstore enables MWI to earn revenue to assist maintaining our programs.
  • Ease of site administration

Microsoft Work Space

  • Awesome tool to save data as online storage – This tool has helped MWI to go green and eliminate massive amounts of paper.
  • More secure than PC and nightly free data backups
  • Can share workspace or my entire screen for group projects – MWI board of directors has utilized Microsoft Workspace to work on fundraiser projects and committee projects.
  • 25 gigs of data space...that is a lot of data space!!

Microsoft Live Email:

  • Great for calendar sharing – MWI board of directors and staff now share a calendar to post events, meetings and other pertinent information that board members need in order to stay in the loop of what is going on within the organization.
  • Great for task (To Do) sharing
  • Online anywhere access – Microsoft Office Live enables all MWI board members and staff to have access to anything, anytime, anywhere.
  • Mobile phone accessible

Microsoft Shared View:

  • Can conduct live presentations with very little experience – MWI have on-going technology training sessions for board members and staff through the shared view tool.
  • This software is light and easy to install
  • Great for team or workgroup collaboration

In conclusion, Microsoft Office Small Business has significantly improved MWI’s capability to operate more efficiently as an organization. Because most nonprofits operate on small budgets, it would be in the best interest for nonprofit organizations to incorporate these FREE tools within their business structure. Thank you Microsoft for developing these on-line small business tools that even nonprofits can utilize within their business structure. Microsoft Office Small Business has taken MWI to another operating level and has allowed us to impact our community in a positive manner.

Submission Category
Stable and Secure Technology
Project Image
MENSWEARLOGO.jpg