Imagine juggling schedules for 90 children with all their activities, trips, chores, and school rides while coordinating over 100 tutors, caregivers, and staff. At The Littlest Lamb, this isn’t a hypothetical challenge.
Before they found Teamup, the nonstop operations and complex scheduling was managed on dozens of spreadsheets. While they were as organized as it can get with Excel sheets, it was a stressful setup, with schedule conflicts and continual Whatsapp notifications.
Marina Rina, General Manager at the children’s home, set out to find a better solution. When she came across Teamup, she knew it was the right fit. Within a few weeks, the transition was well underway to replace Excel chaos with a streamlined, efficient scheduling and communication system. The Teamup solution has brought scheduling clarity to the complex operations that support their mission of caring for orphaned children.
Bringing clarity to complex scheduling
The challenge
- Scheduling complexity: 90 children, over 100 part-time and full-time staff, multiple facilities, and countless activities to coordinate.
- Disconnected planning: All the scheduling pieces were separated into different Excel sheets, which made collaboration difficult for staff members.
- Inefficiency: No overview meant a huge workload and lots of back-and-forth communication between staff members to manage resources and avoid schedule conflicts.
Teamup in action
- Making staff availability immediately visible: Color-coordination, filters, and searchability for all staff members in one master calendar.
- Providing an overview for comprehensive activity planning: Infinitely expandable calendar space with collapsible folders for focus and flexible layouts to compare schedules.
- Enabling conflict-free facility scheduling and transportation logistics: All rooms and fleet resources in one place with immediate visibility on what’s available and rules to automatically prevent double-booking.
The results
- Reduced communication complexity: Staff can check availability, provide updates, and stay informed of schedule changes quickly and easily.
- Smoother daily operations: With every aspect coordinated in one master calendar, regular scheduling is easier and conflicts can be avoided.
- Efficient resource use: Clear, visual availability reduces the need for constant checking and enables staff to make better use of their rooms, vehicles, and other resources.
- Improved productivity and focus: Staff have more time to spend with the children, rather than on administrative work.
The Littlest Lamb and Birdrock Home
Birdrock Home is a loving family environment and support system for 90 children, ranging from newborns to young adults, who have lost one or both parents to death, prison, or abandonment.
An initiative of The Littlest Lamb, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operating in Egypt, Birdrock Home’s mission extends beyond basic care. The staff creates a stable environment that supports psychological, educational, and personal development through:
- Trauma-informed staff
- Personalized, curated programs and schedules
- A beautiful facility on a 9-acre plot with sports and arts amenities
Birdrock Home is divided into apartments, each functioning as a family unit within the larger home. Each apartment includes a room for the caregiver, a bedroom for each of the three children, and a common area.
Juggling spreadsheets
“Before using Teamup, our biggest challenge was organizing schedules, especially in different departments, because we have teachers, caregivers, admin, and volunteers. Our communication was pretty scattered in terms of making sure that we’re using our resources efficiently.”
With 90 children, over 100 part-time and full-time staff, multiple facilities, and countless activities to coordinate, The Littlest Lamb necessarily involves a lot of scheduling complexity. It was a challenge to keep everything coordinated with so many factors involved.
Fragmented information
Gathering information from 15-20 separate Excel spreadsheets made comprehensive planning feel impossible. Without staff access to a centralized view of schedules, tracking who, what, when, where, why, and how became more and more of a challenge as the organization grew.
Inefficient communication
Scattered information wasn’t the only annoyance Marina and her staff had to deal with. Ping after ping, constant WhatsApp notifications disrupted their focus and workflow throughout the day. The staff did their best to communicate updates and changes, and the quickest way to do so was by sending screenshots of schedules from one group to another via WhatsApp.
Resource coordination problems
Despite the overwhelm, the staff kept things running without the proper tools. However, the hodgepodge system of sharing schedules made scheduling group outings and shared transportation a logistics nightmare. For example, a group of children and a tutor might arrive to use a room, only to find that another group is already using it. It was hard to avoid booking conflicts for rooms and fleet vehicles, since the staff didn’t have an efficient way to view availability. Coordinating resources is a common problem, and it’s often difficult to find tools that make availability visible in a user-friendly way.
Seeking a solution
After wrestling with spreadsheets one too many times, Marina tried other scheduling and communication software but found them inadequate or too expensive. She said one system, designed for tutoring facilities, charged per scheduled class. The cost was well over their budget, even with donor support. Then, she discovered a solution that addressed their specific challenges — Teamup.
“When I came across Teamup, I did not have any hesitations whatsoever,” Marina says. “As soon as I saw Teamup’s website, I thought, ‘This is for us!’ It was a perfect fit.”
User-friendly interface
Marina found Teamup’s website so easy to use that she immediately created an account and started tinkering with the calendars to see how it could accommodate the Birdrock Home community. “I could just sign up right away, and it was automatically very user-friendly,” Marina explains. “I didn’t need extensive training or someone to walk me through the process.”
Multi-lingual capabilities
Language support was crucial for Birdrock Home’s bilingual staff. Having the information in Arabic and English makes life flow naturally without unnecessary barriers. “Members of our staff speak Arabic or are bilingual, so they don’t read English fully,” Marina explained. “We just trained them how to identify the key English words to use, and we write in Arabic on the schedules.”
Flexible access
The ability to create custom views and access for different team members solved their permission challenges. Marina has a master view, while caregivers, tutors, and other staff members have a view of and access to information essential to their positions.
Cost-effective solution
Marina was relieved to see reasonable pricing that fit within Birdrock Home’s budget. She knew it would be sustainable for the long term. Marina didn’t have anything to lose because new users can try a live demo and enjoy a free service that includes eight sub-calendars and eight account-based users. For users looking to scale, there are affordable plan tiers to support an organization’s needs at every level.
While Teamup’s capabilities were impressive, the real challenge would be getting the entire staff on board with a new system. Marina developed an implementation strategy to balance immediate needs with long-term adoption.
Onboarding staff
Introducing new technology to Birdrock Home’s diverse team with varying technical skills and language proficiency required a thoughtful approach to ensure successful adoption.
Gradual rollout strategy
Marina’s biggest challenge was to get team buy-in and train them to use the new system. She asked the team to use both old and new systems for two weeks to ease into a new way of operating.
They also gathered for weekly training meetings, with the first session lasting just one hour. Marina also provided specialized language training to address diverse needs. After three meetings over a month, they completed the transition to Teamup.
If the team needed support, Teamup’s Help Center was packed with helpful video tutorials, tips, and ideas. Beyond that, the support staff is responsive when Teamup users reach out. With the technical foundation in place, Marina and her team began using Teamup to address their most pressing scheduling challenges.
Customized access
Marina knew that giving everyone access to everything on the schedule was an invitation for overwhelm and mishaps. So, she assigned permissions and shared customized access for different staff roles.
Marina and staff also created accounts and a pilot program for Birdrock Home’s most tech-savvy teenagers. “They see their own schedule and manage their time without all the busyness of the main calendar,” she explains. By using customized views for different departments and roles, they achieved an impressive 80% staff adoption rate and enthusiastic acceptance of the new system.
Transforming daily operations
Beyond the many teams and individuals that make up Birdrock Home, there are also an art room, a music room, a sports field, a computer room, a library, and numerous other facilities to manage. Teamup’s comprehensive scheduling solution helps Marina and the staff keep everything running smoothly.
Staff scheduling
Coordinating 40 rotating caregivers who split shifts across multiple apartment units is a puzzle in any situation. Using multiple spreadsheets made it even more challenging. “We would create an Excel sheet, take a screenshot of it, or do something similar,” Marina explains. “Then we would send the screenshot within a group or send it in several groups.”
Now, Marina is simplifying scheduling by placing caregivers in a shift schedule visible to everyone who needs to know. Staff simply check the calendar to see who is on shift each day. With comments on each calendar entry, it’s easy to leave and check messages. Staff can access information right when they need it, without having to click multiple tabs or switch between apps.
Child activity management
Of course, the most important residents of Birdrock Home have busy schedules as well. The children’s schedules are overflowing with school, tutoring, therapy, and extracurricular activities, all of which need careful coordination. A Teamup calendar’s visual cues and centralized tracking make managing each child’s activities a calmer, streamlined process.
- School schedules
Since children attend different schools and grade levels, the calendar helps staff know when students are traveling to and from school. This visibility ensures no child is overlooked during busy transition times.
- Tutoring sessions
Volunteers provide lessons in various academic and non-academic subjects, either in groups or one-on-one. The calendar helps coordinate these educational opportunities effectively.
- Therapy appointments
The system makes it easier to coordinate with the children’s specialists, so they can receive proper support regularly and without added stress.
- Extracurricular activities
The children participate in activities outside Birdrock Home to integrate into society and give back to their community. Tracking these activities helps maintain a balanced schedule for each child.
“I feel like things are just much clearer since we started using Teamup. I can see gaps in people’s time, especially the kids. When teenagers are free, it’s not the best thing. We need to keep them busy all the time, so we can actually help fill their schedules.”
Facility scheduling
Birdrock House is often brimming with activity, so staff and children need to be able to reserve multiple rooms without conflicts. Teamup provides a simple reservation system with a clear visual indication of when rooms are in use. It automatically prevents double-booking and allows staff to check availability before planning activities.
Transportation logistics
Managing fleet availability and coordinating transportation for various groups of children attending different activities is much easier. “Teamup has helped our fleet schedule, which was a really big issue. We might have an outing going to a specific town or city, but there are other groups of children going to that same town,” Marina says. “It was very difficult to maneuver and communicate all of that with the different groups of people going out. There was a lot of confusion, missed appointments, and incredible inefficiencies with children not knowing where they were going.”
Now, staff consult the fleet calendar to see where different groups are going, check available transportation, streamline outings to maximize efficiency, and prevent scheduling conflicts.
Bringing calm to complexity
Since day one, implementing Teamup’s transformative workflows has streamlined day-to-day life across multiple areas for The Littlest Lamb and Birdrock Home.
“Teamup saves us time and confusion.
If I’m thinking, ‘Okay. Where’s this person?’ I just open up Teamup, type their name, and I know where they are without going from place to place to find them.”
Here’s how using Teamup has helped staff spend less time on tedious tasks and spend more time on what matters most — the children:
Streamlined communication
It’s easier to communicate quickly and in more detail. “Everybody has their own link,” Marina says. “Teachers use their links to see which kids they’re going to tutor and teach. They can check the comments to know if someone is going to be late. It’s just very clear.”
Scheduling visibility
The comprehensive view helps the staff allocate resources more efficiently. “Teamup helped us see that we could shift a couple of appointments,” Marina explains. “Before, we couldn’t see the full view of the speech therapist, the two kids who needed it, and the caregiver who was there for supervision. Now, we have an overview of the week and the specific children who need speech therapy.”
Simplified location tracking
Finding information is now seamless because visual cues help staff locate students at a glance.
“I don’t need to open 17 Excel sheets, the activity sheet, and the bus route sheet to find a child. Are they back from school? Are they not back from school? Now, it’s easier to know what’s going on.”
Improved productivity
Staff productivity has improved in several key ways:
- Fewer disruptive notifications: Staff no longer face constant WhatsApp alerts — they simply check the calendar when needed.
- Centralized hub: Everyone knows where to find the information they need
- Easier scheduling coordination: Visualizing everyone’s availability helps prevent conflicts and identify opportunities.
What started as just a way to fix scheduling problems has become a key part of how Birdrock Home runs day-to-day. Beyond just the technical benefits, Marina sees how better scheduling has changed the way their team works together and helps them take better care of the children.
After going through the setup process, Marina has advice to share with other nonprofits, schools, shelters, and homes that are struggling with the same problems.
Tips for nonprofit teams
Here at Teamup, we love to see our community of users teach other community members. If your experience sounds similar to Marina’s, she offers these key recommendations for organizations implementing Teamup:
- Get started: “Sign up for Teamup right away. Do it immediately.”
- Start with a gradual rollout: Use both old and new systems during the transition.
- Hold regular check-ins: “Leaders should regularly meet with their team to touch base and see if they have any questions to ensure things are running smoothly.”
- Tailor access and configuration: Customize access for different roles; set defaults and options for daily use.
- Be flexible about adoption: If something isn’t working for your team, reevaluate its importance and adjust your approach as needed.
The story of Birdrock Home shows how having the right tools can help nonprofits do what matters most — in their case, taking good care of children who need a stable, loving home.
Many thanks to Marina for sharing their story of bringing calm and clarity to the complex scheduling needs at The Littlest Lamb. And our heartfelt support and appreciation go out to Marina and the whole team for the important work they do. We wish everyone at Birdrock Home all the best.
Check out (and share!) a visual summary of this story. Ready to learn more? Dive into in-depth customer stories and view our continuously updated stream of customer feedback. To simplify scheduling and communication for your organization, try Teamup: A simple and powerful calendar at your disposal.
