FairlawnGig Helping Akron Community Foundation in its Mission

Founded in 1955, Akron Community Foundation is the home of more than twenty employees dedicated to serving Summit County by connecting philanthropic resources with the worthy nonprofits that need them.

A recent rollout of Office 365 led Melina at the foundation to FairlawnGig. The Internet requirements for the cloud-based productivity suite were putting a strain on the organization’s current Internet service and impacting the organization’s productivity.

“When you work for a nonprofit, you end up wearing a lot of hats,” explains Melina Boyce, Database & Grants Administrator and IT Manager for Akron Community Foundation.

One such hat for Melina is overseeing the technology for the foundation, from end-user support to the server and network administration and Internet service, to all the organization’s database needs.

“The speeds we were receiving were not great and the reliability was an even bigger problem,” says Melina. “Time and time again I would open up a service ticket with our previous service provider and they would make me jump through hoops when I explained our issues. I was spending way too much time trying to get them to fix something they should, yet didn’t, care about.”

In the midst of a search for a solution that may help them get out of their current Internet issues last summer, Melina had heard that FairlawnGig was starting to serve Akron and perhaps the foundation could jump on the network. The hope was that FairlawnGig could help the foundation get beyond its connectivity challenges and back to focusing on being the charitable service providers they’re known to be.

“When we got the foundation up and running on FairlawnGig, staff was able to work quickly and efficiently,” explains Melina. “Right away our staff noticed the difference when we switched to FairlawnGig as syncs and accessing documents in the cloud was much improved.”

Melina goes on to say that “Working with FairlawnGig has been an eye opener. The service we’ve received from day one has been great as we were up and running quickly and easily and I no longer am dealing with trouble tickets and unhappy end-users. FairlawnGig provided us with the reliable Internet connection we needed to support our work in the community”

After more than six months of great Internet service, Melina says Akron Community Foundation is exploring more ways FairlawnGig can help the organization, such as potentially moving from traditional phone service to FairlawnGig’s hosted telephone services.