The Challenge
Nova For Women and Children supports women and families, often at the hardest moments of their lives. Like most not-for-profits, its resources go to the mission, not to IT. But staff still need somewhere central to find policies, procedures, forms, and news, and scattered shared drives and email threads do not cut it. Information gets lost, versions drift, and new starters struggle to find what they need. A heavily customised intranet was never going to be the answer; the cost and maintenance would be hard to justify.
Nova needed a real intranet without a big build behind it.
What Evocate Delivered
In 2023 Evocate delivered an out-of-the-box SharePoint Online intranet:
- Native capabilities: used SharePoint Online’s communication and team site features rather than custom code, keeping cost and complexity down
- Clear information architecture: document libraries, policies, news, and key resources so staff can find things fast
- Nova branding: applied the organisation’s branding and structure so the intranet feels like theirs from day one
- Built-in governance: kept it within the Microsoft 365 the organisation already pays for, with the governance and security that comes built in
Outcomes
Nova’s staff have one trusted place for documents, policies, and news, with versioning and access handled by SharePoint rather than by hope. Because it is out-of-the-box, there is little to maintain and nothing fragile to break, and the platform can grow with the organisation. The spend is modest and the value is immediate.
Why This Matters
Not-for-profits are right to be cautious about technology spend. The out-of-the-box approach proves you do not need a custom budget to get a capable, well-organised intranet; you need a partner who knows how to configure SharePoint properly and stop there. For mission-driven organisations, that discipline matters: the money stays with the people it is meant for, and the team still gets the tools to work well together.
