BioscienceLA goes further when it can focus on the mission

Challenge: Need for secure sharing and storing

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 organization ensures that Los Angeles has a collaborative, well-coalesced ecosystem that encompasses all aspects of the Southern California life sciences cluster. The organization turned to DocSend to securely share sensitive financial information with board members, disseminate program information to program participants, and execute partnership agreements with participating organizations.

Prior to DocSend, David J. Whelan, CEO of BioscienceLA, indicated that the organization 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.

Solution: A more secure way of storing and sharing external non-profit board communications

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

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 program plans, financial plans, or internal notes, Dave and his organization 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.”

When sharing information outside of his organization, Dave wanted to ensure that all sensitive information was protected. Particularly, Dave wanted to protect the sensitive files he shares with the nonprofit’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 require 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 program 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 subsidized internships with bioscience organizations in the Los Angeles area.

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

Executing partnership agreements with DocSend eSignature

Using DocSend’s eSignature, company partners participating in BioscienceLA’s internship program can sign their partnership agreements. Similarly, once an intern is accepted to the program, 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 program, 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.