Many of us have experienced the discomfort of hospital stays: steady beeps of complicated machines, crinkly paper covering exam tables, and minutes that feel like hours waiting in a cold, sterile room under a piercing fluorescent light. These visits can be especially nerve-wracking for kids who are living with diagnoses they don't understand and can't sleep in their own beds at home.
That’s where Fleece & Thank You (opens in new tab) comes in. This year's NetSuite Hackathon 4Good beneficiary makes hospital stays a little easier for kids, one blanket at a time.
Big Vision Comes With Big Challenges
It took just one phone call to ignite the passion project that became Fleece & Thank You. Founder Nicholas Kristock was volunteering in children’s hospitals and meeting young patients who left indelible impressions on him. So, when his sister, a pediatric oncology nurse, asked him to make a blanket for one of her patients, he jumped at the opportunity.
That moment sparked a blanket-making movement. Every year, thousands of volunteers work with Fleece & Thank You to make around 17,000 blankets for children in United States hospitals, for a total of about 130,000 blankets over eight years. The organization ships blanket-making kits to volunteers nationwide and facilitates in-person group events with its own staff, too. Volunteers leave a video message with each blanket, recording a short greeting for the child who will use it.
Once the word spread about Fleece & Thank You, the organization had more requests to create blankets and messages than ever anticipated. What started as a small, grassroots effort with support from local businesses and Eagle Scout chapters snowballed into a program engaging multinational corporations. Sooner than they expected, the team was inundated with increasingly large requests. Handling donation acknowledgements, volunteer contributions, inventory tracking, and its general ledger became a logistical nightmare. Gaining control was important not only to provide volunteer and donor recognition but also to ensure the team’s ability to monitor key metrics, continue operations, and meet the growing demand for its blankets.
Fleece & Thank You implemented NetSuite ERP in May 2018, finding the ability to handle thousands of orders every year and distribute blanket kits to volunteers with ease. While this helped the nonprofit gain a leg-up on their supply chain operations management, they still needed help establishing a method for forecasting expected materials accurately that will enable quick invoicing to sponsoring companies for all incurred costs after Blanket Making Events, as well as a means for ongoing communication with blanket makers and sponsoring companies.
Breaking Records and Building Solutions
Over 450 NetSuite employees dedicated their brainpower to helping Fleece & Thank You break through this challenge at NetSuite’s Hackathon 4Good.
Hackathon 4Good, NetSuite’s signature employee competition, overflowed with creative solutions to Fleece & Thank You’s roadblocks. The virtual event welcomed NetSuite’s largest cohort of hackers to date, with representation from 25 NetSuite departments including customer success, product development, and sales. Seventy teams of employees from 17 countries rolled up their sleeves and developed ways to track and manage contributions, inventory, and both donor and volunteer recognition for Fleece & Thank You using custom records, APIs, personalized invoices and SuiteApps. The winning solution, from Team Blanket Brigade, addressed the primary challenge and eliminated all manual reconciliation previously done by Fleece & Thank You staff. This team also included delivery status email notifications, invoices that linked to payment gateways, and a map visualizing blanket maker locations for specific events as part of their final solution.
“The result is a sleek framework with minimum manual input from customers using the latest NetSuite technologies to implement the code," said Fabio Caso, senior software engineer in test and member of Team Blanket Brigade. "By leveraging SuiteApps, we’ve created a user-centric solution that identifies key needs, and best of all it was coded with SuiteScript 2.1 – making it fast and reliable.”
As the Hackathon timer ticked down, teams became laser focused on achieving their goal: to develop a solution that met the customer’s need and earned them a spot in front of NetSuite’s founder, EVP, and final Hackathon judge, Evan Goldberg. The adrenaline is something that many of the 83 returning hackers look forward to.
Community Bonding and Blanket-Making
NetSuite’s work with Fleece & Thank You didn’t stop at the Hackathon. NetSuite offices, or hubs, joined in too. More than 300 employees across seven United States hubs gathered in conference rooms, kitchens, and cubicles to twist and tie hundreds of fluffy, bright blankets.
For some, this was more than just a creative way to connect with colleagues; it felt personal.
See how thousands of nonprofits like Fleece & Thank You are accelerating their missions withNetSuite Social Impact.
