Westcoast Connection runs 90+ programs in 20+ countries, with trips ranging from 8 to 40 days each summer for teens and students. Since 1982, over 50,000 teen travelers have participated in their trips.
Before Crowded, Westcoast Connections was left with serious liability. Between the dozens of staff and hundreds of participants, there are many instances where money needs to be given out: stipends for laundry, travel, meals, etc., and they used cash to make these payments. This meant trip leaders needed to go back and forth to ATMs in foreign countries, withdraw and store large amounts, and hand out loose cash in public spaces.
Using cash and ATMs was unwieldy for many reasons. ATMs were not always easy to find; they often had withdrawal limits. Carrying large amounts of cash in unfamiliar environments was not comfortable for the trip leaders. Loose cash was prone to theft or loss.
Rich and the Westcoast team knew that using cash to pay these stipends was dangerous and unsustainable. So he turned to Crowded to cut out the liability and digitize the stipend disbursement process.
How Westcoast Connection implemented frictionless digital stipend payouts
Security & Liability as a non-issue
With Crowded, all distribution of money to staff and participants is 100% digital. Each recipient receives their stipends directly to their dedicated digital debit card. No trips to the ATM, no loose cash, and a digital card they love to use. Digitizing the stipend payment means an increase in security and a decrease in liability for the Westcoast Connections team.
Error-free Disbursement of Funds
When it comes to disbursing funds to staff or participants, the Westcoast Connections staff did not have to worry about human error or mistakes. They created a CSV with all of the relevant payment amounts that went through all the relevant rounds of internal approvals, and upon uploading to the Crowded platform, those funds were instantly transferred to the correct participants. If money was ever sent to the wrong recipient, it was easily reversed, and redeemed to the main account, and sent to the correct recipient. Westcoast would also group relevant recipients by tags, and disburse by tag (for example, tagging all staff as “Staff), further reducing funding errors.
We're talking seconds of work here compared to minutes, sometimes hours of finding an ATM, and then withdrawing, counting the denominations, and then handing it out. It's very, very simple compared to what we used to do with cash
Increased Oversight & Autonomy with Tiered Account Structure
Rich needed a more sustainable solution to manage payouts, without also needing to be involved – especially with the time difference between the European trips and their headquarters in the US and Canada!
Because of this, they implemented Sub Accounts to give controlled autonomy over trip funds to the trip leaders. This way, the finance team can transfer funds on a per-trip basis, and the trip leader can disburse payments to their program staff.
With Sub Accounts, the budgets for each trip can be tracked easily and kept separate. Also, the Westcoast team does not need to be involved in the daily fund transfers; they get to pass that responsibility to the trip leader.
The trip leader only gets access to what is transferred, the relevant recipients, and can manage any transfers easily. Rich and the Westcoast team have complete oversight over the money movement from their account, to each trip leader, to the final recipient.
Happier Staff Long-Term
With the Crowded mobile app, staff can easily manage the funds sent to them by their employer. They can make purchases, send money to their US bank account, or send the money to an international Visa or Mastercard card – this is especially useful at the end of the summer when they want to transfer leftover funds to their personal accounts.
The recipients especially enjoy the transfer between Per Diem accounts feature, an “internal venmo” they call it. It comes in handy when there is a bill that needs to be split up between multiple parties. One user paid the bill, and the others make seamless instant payments to that person on Crowded.
This feature was suggested by Westcoast Connections! And the Crowded Product team was glad to take the suggestion, as this feature is enjoyed by many other organizations paying salaries, per diems, or stipends to groups of people, where they also make internal payments to each other.
