G.A.I.N. – Powered by Lowe’s
Project sponsored by Bank of America.
Through receiving their technology plan recommendations, Changed Choices gained a more holistic view of their technology that will provide them with more security and scalability.
Changed Choices is a nonprofit organization that exists so women who have experienced incarceration can lead restored lives. They hope these lives are marked by healthy decisions, contributions to their communities, and self-sufficiency. Changed Choices is on a mission to empower currently and recently incarcerated women. Through personalized mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual support, Changed Choices works to achieve lasting, positive change.
Apparo’s G.A.I.N. (Growth, Agility and Innovation for Nonprofits) Grant Program provides nonprofit participants with the tools, training and other support they need to implement and sustain their technology and process improvements. G.A.I.N. delivers a one-year journey of technology and process improvement to a cohort of nonprofits to help them overcome their technology challenges and simultaneously amplify their nonprofit impact. The G.A.I.N. program is generously sponsored by Lowe’s. This project was generously sponsored by Bank of America.
“What an amazing gift to be part of the G.A.I.N. Program! The team helped identify multiple areas of growth and opportunity for our programming and staff. The volunteers went above and beyond including a personal site visit to resolve a long-standing internet issue, saving countless hours of frustration.” – Katie Gauntner, Changed Choices Director of Development
In February, Apparo kicked off a G.A.I.N. Technology Plan Project with Changed Choices and skilled volunteers from Duke Energy, Pretium, and Automattic. This project had the goal of streamlining processes and creating efficiencies that would allow Changed Choices staff to better focus on their mission. The skilled volunteer team assessed the current state of the organization’s technology and processes that allowed them to make recommendations for improvements. Through identifying underlying technology pain points, volunteers were able to make data more accessible to staff and create software integrations to streamline processes. Having more readily available data for staff will create an improved ability to communicate with potential and current volunteers, donors, and supporters.
The project team seamlessly created the capacity for a more secure organization by identifying necessary technology, training, and mitigating the risk of information loss. Volunteers supported Changed Choices in asking the right questions to ensure technology and policy foundations are in place that can be grown upon. The organization realized the importance of these foundations and behind-the-scenes operations when considering scalability, which is a priority for the organization.
Director of Development and Communications of Changed Choices, Katie Gauntner shares, “Having the level of IT support and training along with the technology foundations that we need will be so unbelievably helpful and especially important as we scale the organization. We feel like an effective plan of action has been provided to allow us to feel more secure.”
