This Alabama Eye Bank Runs Its Entire Organization on FileMaker
Here’s another example of an organization using FileMaker in a mission critical situation. When someone tells you FileMaker is not a serious database, help them “see” the truth with this story:
The Alabama Eye Bank is a nonprofit that helps those with corneal blindness to see again. Its job is to collect and supply eye tissue to surgeons in Alabama, as well as many other places, quickly. The eye bank’s database has to be powerful and easy to use by many people. This blog post explains how the eye bank uses its FileMaker database to do critical sight-saving work.
Most organizations nowadays, TechSoup included, rely on their databases to do their work. Whether it be donor and grantmaker tracking, client tracking, e-commerce, or inventory, we probably couldn’t survive very long if our databases didn’t do their jobs. I rarely hear about a database as mission critical as that of the Alabama Eye Bank.
The Alabama Eye Bank
The Alabama Eye Bank is a nonprofit headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama’s largest city, but it also has offices in three other regional locations in the state. It has 40 full-time employees and has been around for 35 years. It is one of several eye banks in the U.S. that are members of the nonprofit Eye Bank Association of America. The organization has just two IT people to keep its systems running…
The Alabama Eye Bank FileMaker solution handles nearly everything. It manages referrals, donors, tissues, accounts, contacts, distribution, and online surgery scheduling. It also creates invoices for QuickBooks.
In addition, the FileMaker platform handles employee benefits, including time off, vacation, and sick leave. And it tracks employee mileage and other travel expenses.