We have been studying the capacity we have in the services we offer to our clients. We have chosen to review this data in order to best utilize our resources for the benefit of SYM clients.

We want things to be not-too-crowded and not-too-infrequent to maximize occupancy. We also do not want too much overcapacity so as not to waste donor resources. If clients encounter over-capacity too often, they will turn away.

Our review has looked back across each of the types of services we offer to understand how many clients we could serve with what we scheduled and how many we actually served. The breakdown of our services is as follows: Sunshine Store, Event Center, Learning Center, Outreach and Help Line.

Capacity often turns out to be most limited by the availability of staff and also by the space we have in our facility.

Analysis shows we are frequently over planned capacity in Learning Center groups and in Street Outreach. We plan to deploy more resources for street outreach and to search for a larger location for groups.

The Sunshine Store offers basic needs. Each event has a maximum capacity of 15 clients per hour (which will feel very crowded). Given that we have so many new clients, the current capacity is a reasonable position to hold. We’ve purposely added more time slots and services in Sunshine Store since it’s often the first walk-up service new clients try to utilize after Outreach.

The Event Center offers fun events and includes our popular Friday Funday themes. Capacity is the same as the Sunshine Store. To make 80% peaks work (normally Fridays), we need to have plenty of staff assigned to serve on those days. We try to attract new clients to our popular themed Fridays.

The Learning Center includes our computer lab and our groups, whether via foot-traffic or virtual. These are generally held in the tiny classrooms on our third floor. As a result they have a capacity of 8 people maximum and that is very crowded. We were well above 75% capacity many times. We know that some participants turn away in these conditions unfortunately. We have typically used a different location when we know we have a popular event but this was impossible during almost all of the summer and for the foreseeable future due to irreparable facility problems. This strongly supports relocating this vital and critical activity as soon as possible.

Outreach occurs in multiple locations across Austin and in San Marcos. We have a capacity to serve about 20 people per hour although that is truly fast paced and not ideal. Keep in mind that outreach serves people of all ages since access is outdoors and unrestricted. We are routinely over-capacity which makes conversations harder to have. The strategy to mitigate this is to reserve one staff to talk with younger clients only. This is our primary way to meet new clients which makes conversations crucial. Our original capacity was based on two staff and one volunteer. We see the need for additional trained people to assist. Restricting outreach is definitely not a good strategic move given our impending move.

Helpline. Capacity is about 4 persons per assigned person per day. We control capacity by assigning more people to respond to messages. On peak days people may get slower responses. We could consider assigning additional persons but at the moment this isn’t our top priority.