How Plinth helps Haringey Play Association

How would you describe Plinth generally?

We use Plinth to record all the details about the children we work with. As well as having all their health information, allergies, behaviour records and emergency contact details accessible at all times, we can record registers and session attendances really easily.

It creates monitoring reports for our funders, collecting together information about age ranges, ethnicities, schools and postcodes. At the press of a button we can get pretty much everything we need for funding reports, and for new funding applications.

What would say is the main benefit to using Plinth?

Time! It's massively time saving. We didn't have any admin workers, so before Plinth we were looking for admin volunteers to help us collect all our information. But it's done the work for us.

It's like having another member of staff!

Why did you start using Plinth?

We weren't securing as much funding as other clubs, organisations and schools in our area.

We weren't presenting all our numbers, all our impact, and so we were selling ourselves short. We wanted to be able to report better on the impact we were delivering.

It was only once we started using it that we realised how much time it saved us as well.

How has using Plinth changed the way your organisation works?

The really big one for me was seeing how our demographics and audience changed.

During the pandemic, we could see that we were reaching a totally different postcode to before.

And we saw how ethnic groups were changing. We saw different people coming into the community, something that you don't find out about directly, but we could see the increase in the number of refugees from Eastern Europe. It gave us much better local knowledge.

Now we can also see different age ranges. Before, we had no idea we were reaching so many younger children. We discovered that in the data from Plinth, and that opened up applying to more funding to cater to a different age group.

Where there any unexpected benefits?

We started collecting more notes on the children attending.

Now we know the full story of the child. Any safeguarding questions, understanding whether they are going through bereavement, exclusions etc, we can see it all in one place.

It's really beneficial for the wellbeing of the children.

How long did it take for you to get started with Plinth?

Pretty much straightaway.

It was so simple. We created the registration form. That led to the session form. It just all followed naturally. Now our staff members can do everything from home, and it's become so easy.

Also, you guys are so accessible. We have a question about anything, and we hear back really quickly.

Using other things in the past, you just don't get that.

Do you have any advice for other organisations getting started with Plinth?

Do it in a heartbeat.

We've saved so much time that has freed us up to look for new funding.

We run a better service because we're no longer bogged down in paperwork. We can focus on frontline services, and concentrate more on the children.

Any other thoughts?

I've been recommending this to everyone. I've starting working more with other groups and this is one of the first things I suggest.

This platform has never been stagnant. There's always been changes and adaptations to the needs of organisations. It's become a lot more specific to us as an organisation.

There's nothiing worse than a stagnant, distant programme that you can't feedback to. This isn't that.