Is Human Essentials Right for You? (What We Help with and What We Don’t)
Human Essentials is a free system for Essentials Banks
Human Essentials is for Essentials Banks – by which we mean organizations that distribute essentials (diapers, period products, etc) to other organizations that work directly with people in need.
We are an all-volunteer organization
We can offer this system for free because we are an all-volunteer organization. We have sponsors who provide funding or in-kind services for the servers that the system runs on, but changes/support can take time.
What we help with
- managing your Partners
- gathering the information you need about your Partners
- your Request / Distribution cycle (Partners can provide requests to you through the system, and you fulfill them)
- scheduled reminders to the Partners re Request deadlines
- a calendar that shows when you’ve scheduled Pickups and Deliveries
- inventory
- when you record Donations, Purchases, and Distributions (to Partners), your Inventory record is automatically adjusted as of the date/time you enter the information
- Audits and Inventory Adjustments
- handles multiple Storage Locations
- making up Kits for distribution from existing Inventory (this is mostly used by our period supply focused banks)
- community management
- keeping track of your Donation sites, Product Drives (and Product Drive Participants)
- reporting
- yearly report with much of the information the NDBN annual survey requires drawn from your activity in the system
- itemized distribution breakdown over time
- trend reporting
What we don’t help with
- general business needs (such as payroll)
- volunteer coordination
- donor tax receipts
- direct distribution – there are some things that help with that in the Partner side, and some banks run a Partner for their direct distribution practice, but it is not our strength.