Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada Public Web Site and Members' Extranet

The Client

Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada (BGCC) is a leading provider of quality programs to children and youth that support the healthy physical, educational and social development of more than 200,000 young people and their families in Canada each year. BGCC is an association of over 100 clubs located in 700 communities across Canada. Clubs are in neighbourhoods where they are most needed – in large city centres, remote rural communities and on First Nations Reserves. Trained, dedicated staff and volunteers provide children and youth with programs in physical recreation, technology, the arts, personal development and more. Many clubs also provide meals, family support programs, emergency shelter and other support to children and youth at risk.

The Envision IT Solution

Envision IT developed a new revitalized public website and private members-only site for BGCC. The site (www.bgccan.com) is a professional, dynamic, interactive web marketing tool that demonstrates the value of BGCC as a primary provider of services to children. It is aimed at building public trust and driving support for BGCC through participation and donations. The site is a source of emotional engagement and information on the movement to current and prospective donors, to communities seeking to start a club and to parents looking to understand club programs and resources.  In addition, the members-only area of the site provides relevant resources and training to key staff/volunteers and facilitating the sharing of knowledge, information and resources among BGCC membership nationwide. Built on SharePoint 2010, the website offers all the features of a web publishing portal and the functionality of a collaboration portal with the enhanced security of an Extranet.​ Read more about our work with BGCC here.

Originally envisioned as two separate sites, Envision IT was able to provide a single, unified experience to both public visitors and authenticated members with the addition of the Envision IT Extranet User Manager.  This add-on provides BGCC with the necessary tools to create accounts for members, staff and volunteers outside of their domain. Members self-register and their accounts are approved by their own peer members.  User registrations are managed and linked to Microsoft CRM by the Extranet User Manager.  It then allows users to collaborate selectively inside a secure SharePoint environment and engage in peer conversations either through comments on staff blogs and/or discussions on various topics. Members take advantage of numerous resources and training materials maintained in the private area of the site and audience targeting means that logged-in users find the resources they need based on their permissions.

The tool provides password management and lost password retrieval, a landing page for directing external users into their sites, display & management of users’ site access, and web-based account creation and management.  The EZ-Login with Hydra Provider allows an even broader set of users to login to the SharePoint Extranet site with an improved, seamless login experience. Users login with their familiar network username and password or their email address, and windows authenticated users do not need to re-enter their credentials.  Forefront Security for SharePoint was  implemented to ensure that all content uploaded or downloaded from the site is scanned and secure.