Case Study: The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault

The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault ("the Alliance") is a nonprofit organization providing outreach, education, and advocacy to the sexual assault community in New York City. They required a Web site that would allow them to communicate with their constituency. In particular, they needed to publish a database of sexual assault programs in New York. They also needed to regularly publish jobs, volunteer opportunities, newsletters, program announcements, and group counseling updates. The Alliance also runs several programs, such as the Forensic Healthcare Program. These programs needed the ability to post announcements, research results, and other materials.

In 2001, The Alliance hired Sam Nelson to develop the site. Sam was able to very quickly implement an SPS solution. In a short time and with very little training, the staff at the Alliance was able to update all the elements of their site with minimal support. They added full-text search to the site, as well as seven different mailing lists. The site now has over 1800 pages of content, and is growing daily.

After the site had launched, the Alliance decided to change the graphical design of the pages. When the new design was approved, the SPS templates were modified to reflect the new look. Because the site was generated from a database, only a minimal set of templates needed to be changed; the entire modification took less than two days.

The Alliance site can be found at www.nycagainstrape.org. Alliance staff continues to update the site on a regular basis using SPS. In 2005, Clever Name Here completed a custom awareness campaign site, located at listencampaign.org.

Clever Name Here Inc. remains very involved with the Alliance, adding features on a regular basis. In the past year alone, we have
  • Helped the Alliance compile a database of over 120 factsheets about sexual violence and related issues, published on the Alliance site and syndicated to other sites
  • Created a new Action Center
  • Implemented a partnership program, "Spas for Survivors", in conjuntction with another CNH client, The Enterprising Kitchen
  • Worked on multiple grant applications
  • Collaborated with the Research Department on a multi-agency project to develop standards and tools for sexual violence data collection throughout the state
  • Created the Pause Button resource center
  • Implemented, with the Research Department, the first-ever online survey, certified by multiple hospital IRBs, to ask survivors about their level of satisfaction with the services they received.