Women’s Impact Fund reached out for help with their data information systems.
Women’s Impact Fund (WIF) reached out to Apparo in need of an integrated system to allow collection, sharing, tracking, analysis and reporting of data and other constituent information – membership and CRM capabilities being two key requirements. Apparo matched them to a volunteer from CGI. CGI also generously sponsored this project.
Over the years, WIF has put various technology solutions in place to manage their members, donors and operations. They have recently transitioned to YourMembership (YM), but cannot currently access historical information or non-member data within the system.
They sought help to confirm whether YM is the software application they should continue to use or if there is another software application that would better fit their needs and budget.
See project overview Snapshot.
The project has been completed and WIF anticipates many benefits.
We connected recently with Patricia Massey Hoke, Executive Director, and Fielding Williams, Membership Coordinator, to learn about their Community Impact Project.
Through this project, they determined NeonCRM was the best software choice for their organization. However, given instability from the COVID-19 pandemic, they will likely stay with their current system, YourMembership (YM), and optimize its use over the coming year.
Utilizing new database features will bring benefits to current members.
Continuing to analyze NeonCRM and using features of YM that they had not before is anticipated to yield many benefits to current WIF members:
- Automated event confirmations and reminders
- Streamlined surveys to collect member feedback
- Enhanced membership directory
An enhanced user experience is likely to help with member retention and has the potential to help with fundraising and member acquisition.
Increased staff efficiency and reduced expenses are other anticipated benefits.
“Staff efficiency is a significant benefit and a priority for our organization,” Patricia explains. “For example, we can better utilize YM to send event reminders and surveys instead of doing it outside the system. This time savings is important to us because we are at maximum staff capacity going into a year that will be financially challenging for many nonprofit organizations.”
Reducing expenses is also a priority that will be addressed. “Right now, we pay for various survey tools which each do slightly different things. We’re hoping some can be replaced with the survey tool in YM,” shares Patricia.
All project team members enjoyed their experience working together.
Radha Mukkai, corporate volunteer from CGI, shares his enjoyment of this role in this project. “I am very glad I was able to be of service to the team and make a small contribution. I highly encourage others to work on Community Impact projects with Apparo. The projects are very meaningful and fulfilling.”
Patricia shares her appreciation of both her volunteer and Apparo. “I appreciated Radha’s ability to help us define our requirements, putting our needs into words that software vendors understand. Radha’s experience enabled me to have total confidence in him and know that he was dealing with the vendors, handling the questions and the back and forth. I’m very grateful for his support.”
Patricia continues, “I project manage so much day to day, it was helpful to have Apparo leading this engagement. I also valued Apparo’s third-party validation, given their experience with many other nonprofits. That was important to our Board. Allison has seen other nonprofits struggle with the same things we struggle with. It was helpful to get her perspective on what has worked well in reality.”
Fielding adds, “Radha had many good questions about what we needed and was able to dig deeper, articulating our targeted, clear need. I appreciate how well he listened to us. And working with Apparo was fabulous, a really good partnership.”
Nonprofit Overview
Women’s Impact Fund (WIF) is a 501(c)(3) organization that started in 2003 with 158 founding members and has grown to over 500 members that in 2019 granted $421,000 to six local nonprofit organizations.
