U.S. and International Operations

U.S. and international operations Steve Thompson, Chief Operating Officer

The Operations teams around the world are working hard to support ministry in new ways as our mission grows. As we do this, we remember and are thankful for the vision of our ministry, which has not changed since 1941: introducing adolescents to Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their faith.

U.S. Operations

Our team is coming together to innovate new products and creative ideas for serving and supporting our partners in the field. Three standouts are Core Ministry Impact (CMI) Dashboards, Integrated Support and YL Connect Camp.

CMI Dashboards

• With the new YL Connect functionality, we now have the capability to help area ministries have a better idea of their impact in their local communities. The CMI dashboards are embedded in YL Connect and give area directors, and all levels of field leadership, visibility into exactly how we’re progressing toward our Forward goals, specifically around Together and Growth. The seven key metrics included in the dashboard are:

Kids known by name Number of kids in club weekly Number of kids in Campaigners weekly Funding

» Number of women on staff (area director and above) » Number of people of color on staff » Camp numbers » Volunteers Anneke Brown, regional director in the Capital Region, shared this about the CMI Dashboard: “It has been so helpful to learn about new tools like the area dashboard to get resources from CMI that will help our area directors. After discovering the area report one said they would love to show this to their committee and team leaders.”

Integrated Support

As we continue to implement and release program functionality around YL Connect, we realize we need to facilitate better support for our staff. Therefore, we’re creating a new department by assembling staff from various departments in Mission Services already supporting individual functionality for YL Connect products. Our goal is to focus and facilitate support by creating a new team, co-located and trained to support all aspects of YL Connect (reports, events, websites and camping). This team is utilizing Salesforce service cloud as their primary technological

platform to support the various products and programs.

YL Connect Camp

The YL Connect Camp product is designed to be a seamless transition that allows area directors to assign kids known by name into various activities and or camp trips (summer/school season). By doing this, area directors can design and utilize a variety of email, marketing and communication tools to kids and parents, track registrations and payments, and specifically design follow-up once the camp trip/activity is complete.

International Operations

The incredible growth of our international ministry requires an ever-developing infrastructure. Young Life values our staff and has made the care and safety of kids a high priority. Our infrastructure is vital to living out those values. We continue to develop our staff and systems to have the right infrastructure to allow all aspects of our ministry to grow:

Developing a team to handle operations

wherever we have ministry — At the Asia/ Pacific staff conference in Thailand this past fall, Julie Wiggins, our divisional director of Operations, pulled together 40 staff with operational responsibilities and led them through a session on ministry systems and resources. A year ago, the room would have had half the number of people sitting in it. From that meeting, Julie launched efforts to create a network of Operations staff throughout the division. She’ll use this network as a platform for developing and sharing best practices, training and planning future rollouts of new systems. Working together, this team will be far more effective and help us become more sophisticated in these areas.

International Operations Prioritization

Summit — As international has grown, the list of operational needs and projects has greatly

expanded. We’ve been in a reactive mode, but must become proactive. Last November, we gathered staff from Legal, Finance, HR, Development, International Operations and our five International Division Operations directors to review our major needs and projects and prioritize what work to focus on accomplishing this year. In preparation, we went through a diligent and deliberate process of creating strategic plans, crafting objective criteria for comparing our needs, scoring the projects and having initial discussions on each item. These efforts allowed us to work together to prioritize the work and map out the next 12 months of when items would be started with goals for completion. We will hone this collaborative process and build it into our annual rhythms, along with developing clear standards for our work outside of the U.S.

The complexities of operating in over 100 countries are endless. Our leadership and teams must use the collective experience and wisdom of our group to build the infrastructure that will allow our ministry to grow exponentially. Please continue to keep our collaborative efforts in your prayers.