Customer Stories
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid
OnBoard Academy helps this legal aid provider jumpstart the implementation process, streamline board meetings.
Customer Stories
OnBoard Academy helps this legal aid provider jumpstart the implementation process, streamline board meetings.
Industry: Nonprofits
Headquarters: Mercedes, Texas
Board Management Goals
The Texas Trial Lawyers Association founded Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) in 1970 to represent Texas farm workers facing legal injustices. Today, the nation’s second-largest legal aid provider serves 23,000 clients annually across 68 Texas counties and seven Southern states. While continuing to advocate for farm workers, TRLA’s work has expanded to serve a variety of other vulnerable populations, including veterans, victims of domestic abuse, foster youth, communities facing environmental degradation, and many more.
“The individuals we assist frequently find themselves with no alternative options; they have depleted their resources and are unable to financially pursue justice,” said Patricia Griggs, TRLA Program Coordinator. “Our legal arsenal is expansive, specializing in 45 civil legal practice areas; we have almost 500 employees and about 200 attorneys.”
TRLA is headquartered in Mercedes, Texas, about nine miles from the Mexico border. However, the organization also has offices throughout Southwest Texas and Nashville, Tennessee. Its mission is “to provide exceptional legal advice and representation to impoverished people.”
The organization comprises a board of directors with 25 members, including 15 attorneys and 10 client board members. Recognizing the importance of language accessibility at TRLA, both internally and externally, all board materials are provided in English and Spanish.
When Patricia joined TRLA in July 2023, the organization emailed meeting packets to board members ahead of the quarterly meeting. As a monolingual English speaker, she faced challenges, including a language barrier and shifting work priorities, which made preparing packets a week in advance difficult. While Patricia aimed to provide the packet one week in advance, it’s usually provided days before.
As with most boards, the packet was thick with information. Board members sometimes felt they didn’t have enough time to review it before the meeting.
“It’s not a fun position to be in,” Patricia said. “We provide materials in Spanish and English, I have the agenda translated, which can take some time. Respecting other people’s time is a big deal to me.”
— Patricia Griggs
Program Coordinator
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid
When Patricia sought a solution, she examined three digital portals in depth. After she shared the pros and cons of all three providers, the board chose OnBoard.
“I wanted to get them a space online where they could have all their information somewhere that would be secure and organized and streamline the board process,” Patricia said. “OnBoard has voting tools; they can keep their notes secure or share them with others. While some of the other features are a bit more complicated, they’ll still be able to RSVP (to meetings) and have the board meeting on their calendar a little earlier. I presented all the options to the board, and they chose OnBoard. It’s user-friendly and would be helpful to board members who are not tech-savvy. I also appreciated OnBoard’s responsiveness (to her questions).”
The TRLA board is about a month away from utilizing OnBoard for the first time, having purchased the solution just two months ago. Patricia plans to use OnBoard along with the old PDF-email method for that meeting, then phase out the old approach in the near future.
“Kaitlyn [Murray, OnBoard Customer Success Manager] has been very helpful,” Patricia said. “She suggested I go through the motions of doing [meeting prep] through OnBoard to prep myself. That’s the approach I’m taking for December. It’s an in-person meeting (the board meets twice virtually and twice in person each year). I was asked to do the board books the new and old way [for that meeting]. They’ve all been invited through OnBoard; the general details are there.”
With a bilingual board comprised of some members who are more tech-savvy than others, Patricia thought it was important to be as knowledgeable about OnBoard as possible. That’s why she participated in the OnBoard Academy, which is a hub for self-guided training on all OnBoard features.
“Because I was spearheading this, I needed to make sure I understood the tool a little bit more,” Patricia said. “OnBoard is very helpful, but I wanted to know and understand it better to assist better.”
Patricia said she spent about a month absorbing the Academy’s videos and audio tutorials. “There were probably 20 different sections, all with subsections within them,” she said. “There weren’t quizzes initially, but eventually, there were several. You have to pay attention. There are videos and audio that show what you have to do with OnBoard, so there wasn’t a lot of reading. It was easy; I just set aside a little time every day.”
By the time she completed the Academy, Patricia was ready to show the board members how to navigate this new technology that was initially naturally uncomfortable for some of the more seasoned, less-tech-savvy directors.
“Change can be challenging for many,” Patricia said. “Some are willing to work with the change but can resist when uncomfortable. Overall, they were very supportive of this new tool.”
While Texas RioGrande Legal Aid is still very much in the early stages of using OnBoard, early returns suggest Patricia, the board, and the organization will benefit in the short and long term.
“We just had a board training session this past Saturday,” Patricia said. “So far, so good. We will see once we launch in December.”
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