Turnberry Solutions skilled volunteer team supports nonprofit in Canvas software selection to help improve outcomes and expand reach, ensuring more first-generation students are college-ready.
GenOne partners with talented, first-generation students from underserved communities, helping them successfully navigate into and through college. They identify high performing, rising eighth graders attending high-poverty schools in Charlotte and involve students and families in year-round college and career preparatory programming. They prepare students to be “scholarship-ready” by senior year and provide intensive support on standardized testing, applications, financial aid, scholarship searches and career planning. Genone cultivates social and emotional growth through field trips, after school programs, and mentoring relationships. Just getting into college is not the end of the journey. GenOne also supports Scholars with comprehensive college persistence and workforce development services through postsecondary graduation to ensure they gain employment and graduate within six years.
GenOne Charlotte reached out to Apparo for help to identify a learning management system to allow more efficiency in posting presentations, videos, and assignments, as well as tracking assignment and milestone completion.
Apparo matched GenOne to a Turnberry Solutions volunteer team to help identify a new learning management system for the organization. Skilled volunteers reviewed and documented current business processes and conducted marketplace research to determine applications that meet the organization’s business requirements and budget. Volunteers scheduled demos and guided the evaluation of the potential programs. The team supported GenOne in the software selection of Canvas, a student-focused platform to enhance student learning experiences and streamline administrative tasks.
Nonprofit Team: Ian Joyce – Executive Director, Dave Walsh – Operations Manager
Turnberry Solutions Volunteer Team: Zach Ahearn, Aaron Anderson, Edward, Duffy, Jack Geadelmann, Gordon Laabs
After the project was completed with met with David Walsh, Operations Manager, to learn about the significance of the work and its anticipated impact. David shared an overview of the pain points of their current system:
- Suboptimal methods for tracking a students’ journey through the program, including managing curriculum related goals via multiple spreadsheets
- Problematic access to Google Classroom, requiring GenOne to bring Chromebooks on-site to schools
Upon implementation of Canvas, David anticipates:
- Time savings of 200+ hours annually for staff, freeing time to spend in direct service to students
- Automated tracking of student progress
- Automated notifications to students
- Increased student participation/completion of program due to access to notifications, online learning and visibility into their progress
- Support of organization scalability
Importantly, these benefits will help GenOne further improve student outcomes and expand their reach.
The team shared their appreciation of working together on this nonprofit software selection.
Ian shared “We are really grateful to the Turnberry team for all the additional time they spent volunteering to help us find the best learning management system. They did this on top of their full-time jobs, and for our often under-resourced team, the solution they picked will add capacity to continue to allow gen 1 to grow and expand to survey more first generation students in our community. we’re very grateful to Apparo for coordinating this incredible partnership!”
Dave shared, “The Turnberry volunteers were great. They were organized and asked the right questions. Without this Apparo project, it would have been impossible for us to spend all of the time needed to select the right solution. I greatly appreciate their effort. We hope to expand our reach to twice as many students, in the next few years, and this work will help us get there.”
Volunteer Zach Ahearn shared his appreciation, “I loved having the opportunity to contribute to the continued success of GenOne! Specifically, I enjoyed contributing to a project that I know will have a positive impact on many young scholars. I am hopeful that the implementation of Canvas will allow GenOne to better serve their current and future scholars. Working with GenOne was very inspiring, and I am very grateful to have spent the past few months working on a project that aims to help more students succeed in their future life endeavors.”
