A New Beginning

A New Beginning

Because of the dedicated help of COOL volunteer, Peter Duggan, we are embarking on a new adventure in automation. Peter devoted 520 hours to the development of an Access database to track demographic information on guests utilizing our food pantry services. The majority of Peter’s time was spent sorting, filtering and editing our historical data in order to preserve the integrity of the data during migration to the new database. Given the tens of thousands of residents we serve each year, this was no small task, but Peter met the challenge with remarkable skill, patience and humor. The new database and Peter’s extraordinary gift will translate into a valuable savings of the staff time and materials formerly needed for recording and reporting our data and a more comprehensive accounting of our activities to funders, both of which will help us to use our precious resources more effectively. Peter is an instructor of Comprehensive Database at the College of Lake County. He credits his recent volunteer experience with COOL as an opportunity to broaden his own understanding of developing databases unique to industries such as COOL, and for beginning a new adventure in his career of doing the same for other organizations. You may contact him at Peter.Duggan@yahoo.com