BioscienceLA goes further when it can focus on the mission

Background

Founded in 2018, BioscienceLA is an innovation catalyst for life sciences and health innovation in the greater LA region, creating more opportunities for funding, space and talent, as well as messaging and awareness-building. The independent not-for-profit organisation ensures that Los Angeles has a collaborative, well-coalesced ecosystem that encompasses all aspects of the Southern California life sciences cluster. The organisation turned to DocSend to securely share sensitive financial information with board members, disseminate programme information to programme participants and execute partnership agreements with participating organisations.

The Challenge

Prior to DocSend, David J. Whelan, CEO of BioscienceLA, indicated that the organisation would share sensitive information with its board via email attachments. ‘We needed a more secure way of sharing sensitive financial and strategic information with our board. Email attachments would get lost or were hard to open on mobile, so there had to be a better way,’ Dave shared.

THE SOLUTION

Dave turned to DocSend’s secure document sharing platform to safely distribute communications with the organisation’s board of directors, as well as onboard programme participants for a new internship programme.

Dropbox hosts internal documents securely

When Dave first joined BioscienceLA as the CEO, he wanted to ensure that his team could effectively collaborate remotely. As an early adopter of Dropbox, Dave knew it was the right solution to bring onboard for its cloud file sync and storage capabilities. Whether it’s the creation of programme plans, financial plans or internal notes, Dave and his organisation rely on Dropbox to safely house all of their internal files so they can remain focused on their mission. ‘It’s really easy for us to be able to access planning documents we’ve created in Dropbox from anywhere. We’re opening a new site in Culver City, so being able to securely access our files on the go is important for us.’

A more secure way of sharing external non-profit board communications

When sharing information outside of his organisation, Dave wanted to ensure that all sensitive information was protected. Particularly, Dave wanted to protect the sensitive files he shares with the non-profit’s board of directors. ‘I share presentations and financials with our board members before and after meetings. I wanted to add additional protections to ensure that these materials weren’t getting into the wrong hands,’ Dave shared.

While other document-sharing solutions were easy to access by third parties, Dave is able to protect his sensitive documents by adding a password and requiring email addresses to access PowerPoints, PDFs, Excel documents and Word documents that he shares in DocSend.

Seamless updates to board communications

When sending meeting agendas to board members, Dave previously used to send attachments. ‘Sending these materials as attachments was not sustainable for us because sometimes I would need to make updates to the agenda and did not want updated versions getting lost,’ Dave shared. In order to maintain concise communication with board members, Dave turned to DocSend as an easier way to seamlessly update documents on the backend, without having to go back and update the original link. ‘It’s a much more respectful way of communicating with our board members, when we can easily go in and make any edits or updates with DocSend behind the scenes, without having to notify everyone,’ Dave shared.

Onboarding programme participants using virtual data rooms

As part of its mission to advance the capacity and pace of innovation in the field of biosciences, BioscienceLA offers a BioFutures Internship Program that connects students from underrepresented backgrounds with subsidised internships with bioscience organisations in the Los Angeles area.

Once a company agrees to host an intern, participating companies are sent their own unique DocSend Spaces that hold programme materials and participation contracts. Additionally, interns also receive a customised Space with individualised documents related to the programme. The content portal contains everything that partners would need to know about the internship programme, including schedules and responsibilities. This prevents materials from getting lost and creates a more personalised experience with each partnership organisation and intern. DocSend makes it simple for BioScienceLA to create an organised onboarding process and overall programme experience for partnership organisations and interns alike with DocSend.

Executing partnership agreements with DocSend eSignature

Using DocSend’s eSignature, company partners participating in BioscienceLA’s internship programme can sign their partnership agreements. Similarly, once an intern is accepted to the programme, each student participant signs their agreement contracts in DocSend. Both students and partners are able to easily review all onboarding documents describing their responsibilities in the programme, as well as sign their participation agreements using DocSend’s eSignature. Dave saves time by easily dragging and dropping custom signature fields in DocSend to collect signed participation agreements.