One-Year Impact Update: Coca-Cola Consolidated Volunteers Drive Steady Nonprofit Process Improvements
Sponsored by Coca-Cola Consolidated
Books of Color—a Diversity Drive Author’s Alliance is a community of creatives driven to promote diversity and equality via access to inclusive reading materials in the home and classroom, so children everywhere feel represented in the books they read. They believe children of all colors should grow up with a wide array of books featuring children of all colors. Books with Color raises funds to purchase books from diverse and bilingual authors to undo the solvable racial and social disparity.
In 2024, Books with Color was headed into their first full year of school programming and identified areas in which manual processes could no longer support their size and continued growth. Through this Community Impact Project sponsored by Coca-Cola Consolidated, Apparo matched Books with Color with a skilled volunteer team who provided a thorough business process assessment of the organization’s programming and technology. The evaluation supported Books with Color by creating a guide that included opportunities to improve both internal business and technology processes and provide a scalable approach as the program is expanded. The 2024 project also involved support with the initial implementation of desired process automation.
Recently, Apparo’s Brenna Kinkaid connected with Books with Color President, Kristi Cruise, to discuss the impact of the work and how the organization has experienced many positive changes since working with the volunteer team, including having improved automations in teachers signing up for author readings. Kristi shares, “A lot has changed for the better since we checked in last, but we are still leveraging our same data platform. One of the most difficult parts of our programming is keeping our authors’ schedules up to date, and we are improving our processes to ensure there are no gaps in scheduling.”
Redefining Literacy Equity
Kristi emphasized how the organization is still new, young, and working through the process of building a solid infrastructure with a passionate, part-time volunteer team. Kristi explains, “While we’re still checking in a lot manually to ensure authors appear in the classrooms, the stage we’re at is appropriate for us. There are potentially capabilities in other platforms to improve this process, but we are fulfilling the capabilities in the platform we have. Our dedicated team, though part-time or volunteer, is achieving outsized impact by streamlining workflows and scaling reach. We are building intentionally, with steady improvements that position us for sustainable long-term growth.”
Kristi compares the process of creating their infrastructure to the ‘tortoise and hare’ analogy, sharing, “We know nonprofit work is challenging, what we’ve signed up for, and we know that good things take time. The only people who don’t win are those who quit. We are focused on getting the work done. Like the tortoise, we’re steady and strategic — and that’s how we’re building something that lasts. Our mission represents the impact of people who believe in something and don’t give up. We look forward to having an amazing infrastructure behind a highly empowered, impactful organization that’s redefining literacy equity.”
