G.A.I.N. – powered by Lowe’s
Carolina Computer Partners skilled volunteers assisted Carolina Raptor Center with assessing donor data processes and provided recommendations that will improve staff efficiencies and make data more easily accessible across the organization.
Carolina Raptor Center is dedicated to environmental stewardship and the conservation of birds of prey, through education, research and the rehabilitation of injured and orphan raptors.
Carolina Raptor Center completed the next phase in their journey of Apparo’s G.A.I.N. program, powered by Lowe’s. Carolina Raptor Center was using a ticketing software for the purchase of tickets, annual passes and gift shops items. The data from this system did not automatically feed to their donor management database causing process inefficiencies and data gaps. Carolina Raptor Center was matched with Carolina Computer Volunteers, Bill Hammelman and Ross Feldman, to review donor and guest data processes and provide a roadmap of recommendations to streamline processes and close data gaps. This project was a part of Apparo’s G.A.I.N. program which is generously sponsored by Lowe’s and EY.
As a part of the project, the volunteer team created an interim solution which allows the Raptor Center to combine data from various systems, creating a single dashboard with donor, ticket and Raptor Med data. In addition to this interim solution, the volunteers met with current vendors to understand potential system integration opportunities and next steps for implementing integrations. The final deliverable provided by the volunteers included a roadmap of recommended process and/or software solution changes that can be implemented over time to create efficiency and better meet the organization’s needs.
As a result of this project Carolina Raptor Center anticipates that streamlined and automated reporting will save staff 900 hours annually, a value of $24,300 in staff time. This time saved will result in better stewardship of visitors, members, and donors.
- Time saved can be spent building relationships with current and potential donors, which may lead to increase revenue
- Improve transparency between different departments and the board, by having data available across the organization will empower staff and board to make data driven decisions
Laura Kennedy, Director of Community Engagement at Carolina Raptor Center, shared her excitement about the project, “The team provided practical solutions to help our organization identify ways to adapt, improve, and progress. Their skills and insights offered incredibly useful capacity that we otherwise wouldn’t have and strengthened our ability to function sustainably.”
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Bill Hammelman and Ross Feldman from Carolina Computer Partners volunteer 92 hours and delivered a project worth $22,815.
Feldman shared his experience working on the project, “This project exposed me to a deeper understanding of the Raptor Center’s Donor Data Process and the systems they use every day in their technology stack across several different departments to gather and compute that data. As I work more and more with the Non-profits of Charlotte through Apparo I am able to learn more about their similarly and differently approach their data process and how they leverage their existing technologies.”
Hammelman was also excited to share, “It was a pleasure working with Kris and the Raptor Center team on the Donor Data Process project. In addition to documenting some of the processes that will benefit from future system changes, it was great to provide immediate impact by implementing PowerBI for use as a donor data dashboard for their Board in a simple and repeatable fashion.”
Volunteers: Bill Hammelman, Ross Feldman (Carolina Raptor Center’s volunteer Change Manager, through the G.A.I.N. program)
Nonprofit Partners: Kris Cole, Jim Warren
