In January, 2016, Software Product Manager Mike Brady is celebrated his 10th year at Samaritan. During those years, Mike has seen Samaritan grow and make many very positive changes to enhance the functionality and performance of our software.
Mike was born in Chiba, Japan, moved to Oklahoma, and then at age three, he moved to Salt Lake City. After high school graduation, he attended the University of Utah, where he received a degree in International Studies.
Mike is fluent in Japanese, having served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tokyo, Japan.
In 2005, Mike was employed processing Workers Compensation claims. When Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, Mike felt a strong need to help the people affected by the storm, so he volunteered for three weeks to work for the American Red Cross at the scene of the destruction in New Orleans.
When he returned to Utah, he knew he wanted to continue assisting in volunteer efforts and followed up on a job lead with Samaritan Technologies where he was hired, and began his employment in sales support. After a few months, he began implementing new customers, and eventually became manager over the Implementation and Client Services (support) departments. His next position was technical writer. From that position, he moved to Product Manager, where he has remained for several years.
As Product Manager, Mike’s duties span a few different job descriptions, but he is primarily focused on:
Managing product and sprint backlogs, product roadmap, release schedule, and other artifacts
Determining client, market, and internal needs within our product offering
Providing specifications to the development team for upcoming releases
Improving processes
In 2008, Mike and his family moved to Gresham, Oregon, where he continued his work for Samaritan in product development. In his spare time, Mike and his family enjoy outings together. He and his wife Chelsie have five children: a son, twin sons and two daughters. Mike also actively volunteers in his community and church.
After 10+ years at Samaritan, Mike retains his original enthusiasm for providing ever-improving volunteer software for all clients. He states that one of the most important reasons for this is that Samaritan has a long history of employing highly qualified personnel. Finally, Mike states that, “it’s the clients who keep me on track. I’m always looking for innovative ways to assist them in performing their jobs.”
Cabot Creamery, Fairfax County and Samaritan Technologies – a Winning Partnership
Pictured: Wendy Lemieux; Fairfax County, Lori Wymore-Kirkland, Fairfax County; David Kline, Fairfax County; Chairman Sharon Bulova, Sue Boucher; Fairfax County
David Kline Wins Fairfax County Volunteer Service Award
Takes home cruise for two from Cabot Creamery
David Kline, a Fairfax County volunteer and a Fairfax County Department of Transportation employee, was doubly honored at the 23rd Annual Fairfax County Volunteer Service Awards celebration held recently at the Waterford at Springfield. He not only won the 2015 Fairfax County Volunteer Service Award for Fairfax County at an awards breakfast, but also, as a special bonus, Kline is being honored by Cabot Creamery Cooperative to sail on their 2015 “Community Celebrity Award Cruise”
The 1,200 farm families located throughout New England and Upstate New York who own Cabot have developed several innovative programs to reward volunteers out of respect to the role Cabot dairy farm families play in their communities. The Cabot Community Celebrity Cruise Award is one of those programs and it is designed to help redefine what ‘true’ celebrity really means. It’s selfless volunteers who give of their time, money ideas and energy to make their communities better places to live and work. The Celebrity Award brings like-minded volunteers from across the nation together to relax, network, share ideas, re-energize and then do more good for the non-profits and communities they serve.
Through a partnership with Fairfax County Office of Public Private Partnerships (OP3) and Samaritan Technologies, the top volunteer for Fairfax County and a guest will join other community celebrities and Cabot staffers aboard Celebrity Cruises Reflection on an 8-day/7-night all-expense paid Caribbean Cruise in November. This will be the fifth year the farmer-owners of Cabot Creamery Cooperative have honored the achievements and contributions of volunteers from every part of our great nation.” “We were pleased that our partners at Samaritan and Cabot shared this opportunity with our volunteer,” said Patricia Stevens, OP3 Executive Director.
David was honored for his volunteer service with the Juvenile Domestic Relations Court. During business hours he works for Fairfax County as a Transportation Engineer keeping traffic down and planning community projects. Since 2007 on evenings and weekends, however, he volunteers for the Stronger Together Supervised Visitation and Supervised Exchange Program working with families as a visitation monitor. David was nominated this year for his work mentoring a young father who was court ordered into the program for visitation with his toddler. David went the extra mile seeking out additional training so that he could effectively mentor the young man. David taught this young father the importance of supervising a toddler, how to change a diaper, the joy of sitting on the floor to play and modeled the gift of reading to his child. The family was grateful for David’s support, and even the judge commended his work with this young father.
The Fairfax County Volunteer Service Awards, established in 1993, are presented each year by Volunteer Fairfax and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. The awards serve as a community-wide celebration of volunteerism. There are many opportunities to make a difference in your community. Learn more about volunteering for Fairfax County at www.FairfaxCounty.gov/volunteering or at www.volunteerfairfax.org.
Who is Cabot?
Cabot Creamery Cooperative has been in continuous operation in Vermont since 1919, when just 94 farmers founded Cabot, each contributing $5 per cow and a cord of wood to join the cooperative. Famously known as “Makers of The World’s Best Cheddar,” the Cabot cooperative today includes 1,200 farm families located throughout New England and Upstate New York. As a cooperative, 100% of the profits go to Cabot’s dairy farm families.
Cabot has won every major national and international award for taste and quality, including “World’s Best Cheddar” at the 2012 World Championship Cheese contest, for an unprecedented second time, and Grand Champion at the 2012 American Cheese Society Awards.
The cooperative produces a full line of dairy products including traditional, as well as light and flavored cheddar, Greek-style yogurt, cottage cheese, butter and sour cream.
Cabot is the world’s first cheese maker and dairy cooperative to achieve B Corporation Certification, a third-party validation of its attention to the environment and social impacts on its stakeholders.
To learn more about Cabot and its world-class award winning products, visit: www.cabotcheese.coop.
What is Reward Volunteers?
Reward Volunteers is a free, easy way to track the time you spend volunteering in your community and to earn rewards for your contributions. The program launched on February 14, 2012 as a mobile app that enabled volunteers to log and track their volunteer time and to post their activities via Facebook to let people know about their good deeds, and to encourage others to do the same. Since then, more than 213,000 hours have been logged by more than 3,180 selfless volunteers, to the benefit of nearly 3,000 organizations improving lives and communities and inspiring friends on Facebook to do good.
Now in its sixth iteration, Reward Volunteers 6.0 launched on April 14 and marks the program’s transition from a mobile app to a web-based program that can be accessed by any web-enabled device including smartphones, tablets, PCs and Mac-based devices. RV 6.0 is bigger, brighter, faster and easier to use than ever before! Volunteers can track their hours and post their activities to Facebook. The more hours accrued and the more sharing that occurs, the more chances volunteers have to win prizes, and the more chances organizations have to win money.
The farm families who own Cabot truly believe that volunteering makes the world a better place. Cabot’s farmers serve as volunteer firefighters, volunteer at food banks and soup kitchens, lead volunteer cleanup efforts to protect the environment and improve the quality of lives in the communities they live, work and serve, and much more. Recognizing and honoring volunteers all across our great nation comes as naturally to our farmers as does making “The World’s Best Cheddar.”
To learn more about Reward Volunteers 6.0 and how you can win great prizes for yourself, and cash for the non-profit organizations you serve, visit http://rewardvolunteers.coop.
Why did Cabot partner with Samaritan?
Jen Neary, Director of Creative Services states, “Cabot chose Samaritan to help enhance its new Reward Volunteers 6.0 web-based platform because Samaritan not only understands software & technology, but the company was built upon providing volunteer program managers with state-of-the-art tools and solutions to maximize the impact that volunteers have in the communities they serve. Cabot’s Reward Volunteers program reaches tens of thousands of volunteers nationwide, and we needed a powerful but easy-to-use platform that would take our tool to the next level. Reward Volunteers 6.0 users will now use this web based tool to log and track their time, report out via social channels, and win great prizes and cash for themselves and the non-profit organizations they serve. Samaritan helped Cabot seamlessly transition from a mobile app to a full-blown web-based program that empowers users to easily keep track of their volunteer efforts from virtually any web-enabled device and provides organizations greater reporting capabilities so they can better understand their volunteers. In short, Samaritan understands our program needs because they are passionate about volunteerism – and so is Cabot.”
How did the project go?
Jan continued, “Project process was well organized and delivered on time. Samaritan was great to work with and met our expectations in the transfer of an iPhone App/Web Widget based program to a Responsive Website utilizing their volunteer software making our program available to more consumers. We had weekly calls in order to stay on track and organized.
What did Cabot and Samaritan Learn from the process?
“To my understanding, Cabot’s site is the first to be consumer focused, which did create some road blocks”, said Jen. “The programmers at Samaritan took on these challenges and provided some alternatives, but we do still have some challenges which we will continue to work through.
What’s next?
Cabot will highlight the winning Cabot Rewards Fairfax County Volunteer in their June e-Blast, which will reach 9,000 volunteers across the country.
San Marcos, CA – Every Tuesday morning, Samaritan CEO Bruce Behymer heads to his childrens’ school where he volunteers as a math tutor. “Sometimes when I am helping a very bright student with calculus problems, I’m still pondering the solution as I’m calling it a day.” Bruce commented. Engineering and math have always been Bruce’s great loves, and he enjoys sharing his experience and knowledge to help inspire promising students to advance in those areas.
Samaritan CEO & volunteer math tutor, Bruce Behymer, with student
Bruce has always been enthusiastically involved with many volunteer projects. In addition to tutoring, he has been a soccer coach and a scout leader for twenty years. The proud father of six children, Bruce has always been very involved in their lives.
After graduating from high school, he studied Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech. “Caltech was a challenging, humbling, and fun place where I was exposed to amazing things. I had two Nobel Prize winners as professors, and I even got to discover and name an asteroid. I named it after my father as thanks for my education”, said Bruce.
After his freshman year, Bruce served a two year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the interior of Guatemala. While there, he learned to speak K’ekchi, a Mayan dialect. Bruce also speaks fluent Spanish.
At the completion of his mission, Bruce returned to Caltech to finish his degree. Upon graduation, he found employment with a company named State of the Art Consulting (STAC), which was founded in 1983 by some Caltech friends. “At STAC, we worked as professional inventors. People would come to us with an idea and ask if we could figure out how to make it. It was a lot of fun because every three or four months, we’d be working on something completely different”, said Bruce. “After a while, we wanted to make our own products. We hit a home run with a data compression product for hard disks called Stacker, which eventually had two million users and a 90 percent market share. Stacker won PC Magazine’s Technical Excellence award twice.
While at STAC, Bruce worked as a programmer, team leader, technical evangelist, product manager, and market research manager. After fourteen years, Bruce made the decision to attend graduate school and work on a Masters in Business Administration. In 2000, as part of a team competing with business students from around the world, he won San Diego State’s Business Plan Competition.
Samaritan lunch with Keith Leonard, Bruce Behymer, and Todd McMullin
While at school, he was contacted through friends by Todd McMullin, one of the founders of Samaritan Software, which had been formed in 1997. Bruce joined the company and inaugurated a quality control department. He later agreed to serve as CEO.
Bruce sees a bright future ahead for Samaritan, and he continues to take an active role in developing and improving Samaritan’s product line. He believes that the company can remain the industry leader in volunteer management software, thanks to an innovative and dedicated staff. “We have a fantastic team. They’re a lot of fun to work with”, Bruce stated.
If you have a question for CEO, Bruce Behymer, please leave a comment below.
Samaritan Technologies has been watching the progress of the next Microsoft (MS) browser, codename Project Spartan, which is reported to be bundled as the standard browser of the MS operating system Windows 10, to be released some time in 2015. In their blog entry, Internet Explorer Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ, August 7, 2014, Microsoft states:
We recognize some enterprises have legacy web sites that use older technologies designed only for Internet Explorer, such as custom ActiveX controls and Browser Helper Objects. For these users, Internet Explorer will also be available on Windows 10. Internet Explorer will use the same dual rendering engines as Spartan, ensuring web developers can consistently target the latest web standards.
This has raised some questions regarding Samaritan’s support of IE in the future. MS has established a software lifecycle policy, and as MS releases new products, they continue to support legacy products based on this policy, until the life of those products has reached term. For example, the end-of-life for IE8 is scheduled for January 2016. Support from MS of IE9, 10, 11 will not stop until the corresponding version of Windows is scheduled for end-of-life.
Samaritan support for MS Spartan will be available once a stable version of the browser has been made available to developers and cycled through Samaritan’s own development and quality assurance departments. Samaritan support for MS IE will continue for now, and will be updated based on emerging details surrounding Windows 10, Spartan, and Microsoft’s support model for IE.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8
Particular attention should be given to the end-of-life for Internet Explorer (IE8), which is scheduled for January 12, 2016. After this date the maker of the browser will no longer provide support. The Microsoft policy is explained as follows:
The Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy continues to provide a minimum of five years of Mainstream Support and a minimum of five years of Extended Support for Business and Developer products, and the Windows operating system.
Browser support is connected to the operating system with which it was released. As support for the OS ends so does browser support, in this case XP and IE8. In general Samaritan encourages all users to utilize the most current version of of all browsers. Microsoft explains some of the benefits:
The newest Internet Explorer offers improved security, increased performance, better backward compatibility, and support for the modern technologies that power today’s websites and services. Microsoft encourages customers to upgrade and stay up-to-date on the latest browser for a faster, more secure browsing experience.
In preparation of Microsoft’s end of support for Internet Explorer 8, Samaritan shall end support for IE8 with the release of version 7.5. For users still utilizing IE8 please speak with your IT department to determine your organization’s plan. While previous browsers often still work, after the release of 7.5 support will no longer be provided.
Browser Independence
While the volunteer portal, eRecruiter, is accessible in any of the 4 major browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari (and other desktop and mobile browsers that use the same browser standards), at its current stage of development, the volunteer coordinator portal, eCoordinator, can be accessed using only Internet Explorer (IE).
Notwithstanding, Samaritan’s development team will make eCoordinator, AMS and RMS browser independent, which means they will be usable with:
Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox
Apple Safari
MS IE9+
This work is has been added to our development roadmap for version 7.5 later this year (2015).
Salt Lake City, UT – It’s April, which means that April 15 tax deadline is looming. For some people, that may mean a visit to their accountant, but for others, that date may be approached with dread, confusion, or even fear.
For the past fourteen years, Keith Leonard, Samaritan VP for Client Services and Operations, has volunteered for at least 10 hours a week during tax season assisting eligible citizens and residents with filing their tax returns through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA).
Volunteer, Keith Leonard, with taxpayer, Abe Barlow, filing taxes
The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program offers free tax help to people who generally make $53,000 or less, persons with disabilities, elderly or limited English speaking taxpayers who need assistance in preparing their own tax returns. IRS-certified volunteers provide free basic income tax return preparation with electronic filing to qualified individuals.
VITA volunteers are recertified every year by passing a rigorous tax law test. So why does Keith keep donating his time to VITA? His response will be familiar to all Samaritan clients and their volunteers, “I love the challenge and I feel like I’m really helping people.”
Samaritan has been assisting VITA with their volunteer software since 2009, by designing a referral platform, and providing customer support and training.
At Samaritan, we don’t just design volunteer management systems, we VOLUNTEER!
New Feature we are REALLY excited to share with you!
eCoordinator users with access to administrative features can create surveys for volunteers. The results are automatically stored in the Database so you can track RSVP counts, get feedback right after an event, or use advanced analytics in reporting.
Even better, no configuration is necessary. Simply make the selection for “non-opportunity” survey when creating a new survey. If you would like a link to your survey to be available in the email settings, show “advance survey options” and check to the box to add the “Link to the survey” which may be inserted into the volunteer email.
Show me how?
Login with valid eC user credentials
Go to Tools option and select Administrative Options.
Click on “Survey” tab, and “New” button.
Select radio button for Non-opportunity survey.
Name your survey and add logged data fields as needed.
Make sure to select the box to add the survey as a link.
If adding a link to the volunteer email:
Go to Volunteer Tab on main eC
Select Volunteers you wish to email and click on “Email”
Create email or select a saved Template.
In the Volunteer Mail Merge Fields, look for “Vol Survey:” followed the name of your survey. (Select from options “log in required” or not required).
Insert Merge field into email.
To View Results:
Go to Volunteer Tab on Main eC
Select the volunteer profiles you need (or “all”)
Go to the Log Books
Go to Grid settings and locate the “Logged Data Fields” that comprise your survey.
View your results in the Grid. (Note: make sure to include volunteer name if you need to know whose answers you are viewing).
Salt Lake City, UT – Congratulations to Damien Taylor, who welcomed baby Forest Damien Taylor on Valentine’s Day. Damien and Cici are thrilled to be first time parents, and if anyone is counting, this makes the 4th new addition to the Samaritan family in less than one year!
Damien has worked as a Front End Web Developer at Samaritan for four years. His recent projects include SCAN Health Plan, Soldiers’ Angels, and the City of Albuquerque. He stated that he loves integrating new solutions for clients using third party APIs, such as Facebook and Google maps.
Off duty, Damien is an avid urban gardener, and he is already planning for spring planting. He’s also looking forward to introducing Forest to his chickens and goats.
Salt Lake City, Utah — Samaritan is pleased to announce the release of version 7.2 of our Volunteer Software. Some of the popular features include:
Logged Data enhancements
“Logged Data” is the name for the fields in the surveys that store the data that users enter to create “Log Book Entries.” In 7.2 the Samaritan Development team converted the “logged data fields (LDF)” to “user defined fields (UDF).” This simplified the code by reducing the field types and also added a few new field types, previously available as UDF but not LDF. Knowledge base article
Automation enhancements Over the past several releases Samaritan’s Development team has been enhancing the former “E-mail Alerts” (in the Tools>Admin Options) to a system which can create other types of automations rather than just e-mail alerts. One example of an automation is to change records in mass. Knowledge base article
“Equals During” filters
For years users have been able to build simple to complex filters, called “Named Searches.” As a new “Named Search” filter 7.2 includes options to search on values during specific periods of time. Knowledge base article
“Verification” UDF Several new UDF types were created when the “Profession” system was release in version 6.9.6 for the “Emergency System for Advance Registration of Volunteer Health Professionals (ESAR-VHP).” One of those new UDF types, “Verification,” are now a standard UDF type.
Samaritan appreciates the diligent work done by our clients and internal teams in designing, implementing, and testing these new capabilities. For a comprehensive list of all new features and enhancements, please review our Engineering Notes.
Salt Lake City, UT — As 2014 concludes we find ourselves looking back, and it looks like a full year. Here are some highlights of the year:
3 Major releases:
Jan — 6.9.9 (19 new features)
July — 7.0 (46 new features or improvements)
Sept — 7.1 (44 new feature or improvements)
Highlight Features:
Prerequisites on Opportunities
Enhanced filters to Search system
Phone and Email validation
Surveys (non-opportunity based)
Hundreds of improvements!
2014 Support Stats:
98% approval
Total new tickets: 2567
Total solved issues: 1698
Total Agent interactions: 4328
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AZ Super Bowl Host Committee
This year the AZ Super Bowl Host Committee registered over 10,000 volunteers using Samaritan’s software.
[spacer size=”10″] Thanks to a core group of dedicated volunteers, and new volunteers from Verizon, American Airlines, United Healthcare and many more organizations, this year’s volunteer team contributed to an amazing series of events–and not to mention the big game!
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Samaritan Moved
Samaritan moved to a new location in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City on October 15, 2014. Our new address is 265 East 100 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84111.
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Staff’s Favorite Movies of 2014:
Satina Smith: Birdman
Joel Beasley: Guardians of the Galaxy
Keith Leonard: Chef or The Imitation Game
Dirk Heinz: Guardians of the Galaxy
Susan Lundeen: Selma
Cate Murphy: The Hundred Foot Journey
Mike Brady: The Lego Movie
Todd McMullin: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
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New Samaritan website!
In December Samaritan launched a new website, take a look around.
Washington, DC – According to the Washington Post, Utah once again has topped the national volunteering rate, with 46% of residents volunteering. The national rate of 25.4% is far lower. At an average of 75.5 volunteer hours per person, each resident of Utah spent more than twice the national average of 32.1 hours.
Lt. Governor Cox announces Utah as the #1 state in the nation for volunteering for the 9th year in a row.
Utah has a long heritage of volunteer service. That spirit lead to the creation of Samaritan and remains our mission today. “Samaritan Technologies began designing volunteer management software in a Volunteer Center,” stated Samaritan’s co-founder Todd McMullin. “We honor everyone who takes time from their busy lives to help others in a myriad of ways such as cleaning up a park, serving as a docent, assisting persons in need, or mentoring.”
The Corporation for National and Community Services (CNCS) released Volunteering and Civic Engagement in Utah Trends and Highlights Overview for Utah in for 2013 in the 2014 Volunteering and Civic Life in America (VCLA) report. According to the U Serve Utah website, “At a press conference on Wednesday with Lt. Governor Cox the Utah Commission on Service and Volunteerism announced the report ranked Utah as the No. 1 volunteering state in the nation for the ninth year running.”
The nine year streak is a unique accomplishment for any state in the nation. In awarding Utah the highest honor for volunteerism, the report cited the following statistics:
45.3% of residents volunteer, ranking them 1st among the 50 states and Washington, DC.
937,770 volunteers
154.9 million hours of service
$3.5 billion of service contributed
75.5 volunteer hours per capita
77.9% of residents engage in “informal volunteering” (for example, doing favors for neighbors)
For nearly 19 years, Samaritan Technologies has worked to become the industry standard for volunteer software that effectively recruits, retains, coordinates, tracks, and reports the activities of volunteers. Samaritan welcomes your contributions. Please send us your stories of volunteerism. We would love to share them!
Thanks to a core group of dedicated volunteers, and new volunteers from Verizon, American Airlines, United Healthcare and many more organizations, this year’s volunteer team contributed to an amazing series of events–and not to mention the big game!
