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Resource and Referral Management

Resource and Referral Management

As part of your organization’s workflows, you may provide community navigation services — guiding your consumers with information, resources, or referrals about services that can help them. In order to reduce stress and frustration on people in need, providing accurate information is a must. Creating, maintaining, and curating a database of service providers is a huge undertaking — even if the database has just a few dozen resource records.

iCarol has the tools to save you time and staff resources in this important task.

With iCarol You Can:

Inform USA member

Follow Information and Referral Best Practices

iCarol maintains a corporate Supporter Membership of Inform USA. Our resource database tools are designed in accordance with the best practices and accreditation standards of Inform USA, the professional membership association for community navigation or Information and Referral (I&R). Inform USA drives quality and connection in the sector as the sole source for standards, program accreditation, and practitioner certification.

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Connect Clients with Services

iCarol’s database structure is flexible to the size and scope of your resource and referral activities. Whether you have a dozen of service provider records or several thousand, iCarol is the perfect fit with:
  • Over 100 available Standard fields
  • Custom field creation
  • Ability to turn fields on/off to match your needs
  • Search by Resource Name, Custom Categories, or Taxonomy Term
  • Service Area Assignments
  • Agency/Program/Site structure recommended for Inform USA accreditation

Add and Edit Records

iCarol supports a number of ways to bring service provider records into your database including:
  • Import with our free template
  • Custom import supported by our data experts
  • Application Program Interface (API)
Edit records any time:
  • When viewing the record in iCarol
  • Using the Resource Advanced Search tool
  • Application Program Interface (API)

Harness AI for Style Guide Compliance

iCarol’s integration with Yanzio AI offers a simple yet powerful way to improve resource database quality and consistency. By subscribing to the iCarol API, Yanzio seamlessly connects to your system to analyze resource records against your organization’s style guide, identifying opportunities for greater consistency and accuracy. It can recommend and, with user approval, implement edits automatically—saving staff significant time on manual curation and formatting. This streamlined approach not only enhances data quality but also supports organizations in meeting Inform USA accreditation standards more efficiently.

Search For and Find Appropriate Services

When helping a client you’ll access your resource database to find appropriate referrals for their situation. Resource records can be assigned categories or Taxonomy terms to describe what services they provide, and geographic coverage areas they serve, to be sure your search will find the best resource for the situation.

Report on Referrals Made

Keep a record of which referrals were made by assigning them to a consumer’s Contact Record when you document the interaction. This will make it possible to report how many referrals your organization makes to which agencies and programs, and many other resource-related reports.

Send Referrals By Text or Email

Your consumer may not be able to write down referral information while on a call with you. With iCarol you can send them the referrals you made by SMS/Text and/or Email for convenience, and to ensure they have the correct information on hand.

Engage Service Providers

Ensure accuracy of resource record data by directly engaging the very service providers you’re referring to. Using iCarol you can send update requests to your service providers, inviting them a secure way to review and make changes to their listing in your resource database. Your Resource Managers can then review updates proposed by the service provider, and choose to accept their update as is, or make their own further adjustments. This Automated Verification tool eliminates the need to track down service providers through manual emails, phone calls, or postal mail, saving hundreds of hours yearly in the effort to update your database in alignment with Inform USA standards.

Enable Self-Service

With iCarol’s Public Resource Directory option, you can embed your Resource Database on your website where it can be searched or browsed by your web visitors. This allows multi-channel access to your services for those who prefer self-service over engaging directly with your specialists, while still providing them with relevant and expertly curated search results.

211HSIS Taxonomy Integration

For those who subscribe to 211 Human Services Indexing System (211HSIS), also known as the LA 211 Taxonomy for resource record categorization, iCarol can directly integrate the Taxonomy into your iCarol system where you can customize and apply it according to your policies and accreditation needs. iCarol makes daily updates to the indexing system so that when 211 LA releases new versions, you’ll automatically have the Taxonomy updates applied to your system.

Collaborate with Partners

At iCarol we believe in supporting collaborations that will help your community and bring in new revenue streams for your organization. With iCarol you can leverage your resource data in any number of partnerships and opportunities.

Learn more about how iCarol can help your organization!