Audio & Recap From the UPS Humanitarian Relief Program Capacity Building Call

On Tuesday, November 15, Aidmatrix joined UPS, CARE, UNICEF, and the American Red Cross in a joint panel discussion about capacity building best practices for humanitarian relief as it relates to warehousing and logistics.

You can download and listen to the audio from the call by clicking the link below. 

UPS Urgent Humanitarian Relief NGO and Blogger Call.wav

Highlights of the call:

UPS

As economy has been down, individual giving has been down as well. Corporate philanthropy also down. As economy goes so does philanthropy. Nonprofits need to do more with less, work smarter, and seek out key partnerships. We deliver more services electronically, and many nonprofits need to do a better job of keeping up technologically; be on the cutting edge and make advances with UPS, especially in warehousing and tracking. It will be a key in the future for UPS to partner with an expert in logistics to show how to use technology to deliver smarter and more successful.

Maximize very limited resources that nonprofits have by partnering with businesses that have those resources.

Aidmatrix:

We really try and help our partners be more efficient in their implementations.

Our partners measure their successes through savings or measure and visibility of their gross output.

CARE

We really value the accompaniment from the partnership with UPS on a day-to-day basis. UPS was very keen in on learning what was needed on a field level, before discussing what was needed strategically.

We recognize that supply chain and logistics is critical to have, and recently we’ve been able to build that internally. A number of the things that we need we could not build alone. So we’ve been seeking significant collaboration with other agencies, and trying to build systems and tools, and Aidmatrix has been instrumental in doing that for us. UPS opened up their network of strategic partners, and Aidmatrix has been one of those organizations that has stepped up significantly.

Commodity Tracking System (CTS): Online warehouse that allows NGO to track items within warehouse & also across multiple warehouses.

2 Big Themes:

1. Focus on Impact, measurable and demonstrable impact. Makes sure organizations are held more accountable. Increasing emphasis on collecting real-time data: RFID & Commodity Tracking.
2. Leverage: How can they leverage fairly targeted investments of funding skills, in-kind, into having a broader impact? UPS has been bringing in other partners to help with this.