case studies: NJ SHARES

New Jersey Statewide Heating Assistance and Referral for Energy Services (New Jersey SHARES) is a non-profit corporation organized to provide assistance to individuals and families living in New Jersey who are in need of temporary help in paying their energy bills. Set Now was hired to fix web site programming problems and to create a more professional web presence.

Solution: We created a new public web site which launched in October 2005. Upon Set Now’s further inspection of the programming problems, we realized the site’s core programming logic was flawed and it necessitated us to re-build and enhance the entire system. The challenge was to do everything within a specific budget and within a time frame of 10 weeks in order for the new system to go live exactly on January 1, 2005.

Agencies sign into the system to submit Electric and Gas grant requests, see the status of their grants and print grant applications with further instructions for the customer. Agencies are also able to see the amount of funding available in the county and utility funds before they submit a grant request.

NJ SHARES administrators sign into an administrative web site which enables them to view, approve or reject grant requests. This automatically adjusts the funds available for grants. They are able to monitor agency activity on the site and they have full control over who has access to the site to submit grant requests. In the upper corner of every screen, there is an emergency alert box that let’s them know of any emergency clients or other urgent matters that need to be addressed. Other administrative functions the site offers:

• View and process emergency client grant requests



• Generate letters to send to clients to let them know the status of their grant requests



• Reports on client Demographics, agency activity, and utilities



• Management of funds available for grants



• Extensive search features that enables NJ SHARES staff to generate specific reports



• The ability to send an email to all agencies or all agencies in a particular county or by agency name



• A FAQ which tells NJ SHARES staff how each part of the system works



• And more...

NJ SHARES also have a board members only area that contains meeting dates, minutes, overview of current funding, By-Laws, and Procedures. NJ SHARES staff is able to add this information to the site, to add, modify, and delete board member access to this area, and to send an email to all board members.

The behind-the-scenes complexity of the site is the detail to which the underlying structure of the site checks to make sure there are not duplicate grant requests for a social security number or a utility account number and that there are enough funds available to cover a grant request. Grant requests that are made for people that are not eligible based on income are flagged and not allowed into the system unless NJ SHARES over-rides the decision. Validation is made on appropriate fields to make sure utility account numbers follow the pattern for the utility, that social security numbers are valid and that 2 people from the same household don’t apply for a grant at different agencies.

The most challenging part of this project was the tight time frame of less than 10 weeks for this new system and to stay within budget. We achieved both of these goals and the new agency grant request system was launched on January 1, 2005.

Results: As a result of the system running smoothly, Set Now acquired the contract to create the United Water Cares Grant system and the Telephone Lifeline Application system. Both are to be launched in the Fall of 2005.

Read what NJ SHARES had to say about Set Now Solutions.