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The Indiana Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives describes how IHETS Interactive Web conferencing assists the organization in reaching its goals for training and community outreach.

David J. Liebel, marketing and outreach manager, OFBCI, looked for a means to effectively collaborate with the office’s sub-grantee program directors.

March 28, 2007
Contact: communications@ihets.org

In January 2005, Governor Mitch Daniels created the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI), combining the functions of the Indiana Commission on Community Service and Volunteerism (ICCSV), to ensure that the faith-based institutions of Indiana were provided equal access to state and federal resources and services. The OFBCI provides information, training, technical assistance and limited grant funding to both community based and faith-based organizations seeking to make Indiana a better place to live for all citizens.

The office also serves as the liaison between the Office of the Governor and many of Indiana's community and faith-based organizations, volunteer centers, and corporate volunteer councils.

In seeking a method to help the organization reach its goals for training and community out reach David J. Liebel, marketing and outreach manager, OFBCI, looked for a means to easily and effectively collaborate with the office’s sub-grantee programs directors.  Liebel relates the organization's experience with IHETS Web conferencing service and its use by the office to facilitate collaboration.

“As the recipient of the AmeriCorps block grant for the state of Indiana, a core service of the OFBCI is the promotion of AmeriCorps in Indiana and to increase the capacity of faith and community based organizations in Indiana to better meet the needs of the state.”

“AmeriCorps is a national service program and it provides the opportunity for individuals to spend a year in national service addressing poverty related issues in their own community. Nationally there will be about 70,000 individuals participating in AmeriCorps and in Indiana we will have over 500 Hoosiers participate through our 12 sub-grantees programs throughout the year.”

“We have been bringing the directors of the 12 sub-grantees programs together on a monthly basis to our offices in Indianapolis.  Its unproductive for the program directors, expensive and time consuming, so we began to explore the possibility of using video conferencing to save time and money with our grantees.”

“In talking with the Indiana Office of Technology they mentioned IHETS, I made an inquiry and George Khazal, IHETS digital media consultant, came to our offices with a demonstration of their IHETS Interactive Web conferencing service and we pursued it from there. We hope that Web conferencing will allow our program directors to spend more time fulfilling their mission. We see a number of advantages to IHETS and its services." Watch >>

“The IHETS staff has always been very prompt in responding to inquiries and in providing assistance. Technologically this is a project that would be beyond the scope of our office.  With IHETS as a resource it is very much feasible. IHETS provided training for some of our key staff at their location. The staff returned confident the Web conferencing service would meet the needs and goals of the organization and that we could roll out this service in a relatively short time and provide training to our program directors via IHETS Interactive.”

Currently OFBCI is pilot testing IHETS Interactive and expects to implement the Web conferencing service for the organization by the end of April.

The 12 sub-grantees programs the office administers are:



Last updated: April 13, 2007