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welcome to the city current show powered by Hagen Botham Insurance and financial services this show focuses on sharing good news empowering the good in our community now here's your host City current CEO Jeremy Park welcome to the city current show powered by higan Botham I'm your host Jeremy Park we're always honored to bring you inspiring stories of individuals and organizations making a difference empowering the good and we love talking about topics related to helping lift our nonprofits and that's why we're excited to have with us Dy Jones executive director and chairman of coaction Net's board of directors and Crystal Oliver Chief systems administrator for coaction net how are you two doing oh we're doing great today Jeremy thanks for having us on your show doing good thank you well you all are doing tremendous good and really serving is a valuable resource with our nonprofits and for our nonprofits we'll talk about that but there so much to unpack let's start a little bit though with your personal backgrounds and that'll lead us into what led you to launch the company doy give us some of your background well as you can see from the gray hair it's long so um yeah I um I have um a marketing degree business degree and uh but I spent most of my career uh with the nonprofit sector and in government relations so I went from working for a couple of small nonprofits to working for United Way of the Midsouth as their VP of marketing and I went from there um to the city of Memphis uh doing government relations and um grants for the city worked for three different mayors under the city Administration and then moved over to the county they did much the same thing under the county with um the addition of running the uh division of community services well and I think you're already seeing the through line in terms of working with nonprofits and entities understanding the challenges understanding the opportunities with a you know servant's heart in terms of being able to help lift the community so let's switch it over Crystal give us some of your background yeah mine is actually very similar to Do's I started out working at U for a government agency Department of Human Services uh I started out in Nashville and moved Memphis is home for me moved home to Memphis and um started working as the data coordinator um at the Memphis the local Memphis office and so there is where I kind of learn a little bit more about databases and understanding data and like dy I worked with several different nonprofits since then um worked for CCO and some other nonprofits and have been working just in data and data analysis and compliance for different organizations so already you know the picture is painted is a purpose of lifting the community working with nonprofits a focus on data and a focus on efficiencies and Improvement and how do we connect and combine all these powerful opportunities and that leads us to coaction net so go ahead and talk about how you two met and then obviously forming coaction net well and coaction net is really an outgrowth of all the work that I've done with nonprofits and government um agencies because what you realize when you're writing grants and you're working with these agencies is that they need to prove that what they do works the only way you can prove that what you do works is if you have inputs and outputs and you know you you have to you you can tell stories all day long about clients and and that's great and their success stories and and those subjective results are great when you when it comes down to getting money for your organization and applying to a foundation or a government entity what you have to do is you have to show that the that the work you do has value and adds to the community so the only way you can do that is collect data it's hard nobody likes to do it and um when I created coaction net I did it with a couple things in mind one was making it easier making it easier for agencies to input data and output the results of that data um number two was uh just to to be able for organizations to work together so you know we have the ability in our system for agencies to work together with one client and share information so that that client gets a array of services um and so those are the things that sort of built the backbone of co-action net over the last 10 years how easy how difficult you when you talk about an idea and then as an entrepreneur okay bringing this to life so you see the Gap you see the opportunity but how did you go about building the platform building it so give us a little bit of that behind the scenes of you know creating it well I I'm not a programmer so the first thing to do is hire good programmers um but programmers can only do what you ask them to implement and I think the value that that Crystal and I bring to this arena is that we understand how nonprofits work um and how to help them create a data system that meets their needs so you you have you have to understand the the field that you're working in you have to have really good people and and you have to listen and listen to the community and if they say you know the system does this but I need it to do that you have to be willing to figure out how to do that instead of this give us an idea when you're talking about coaction net with nonprofits especially and saying hey here's who we are here's what we do here's how it can benefit you walk us through some of those value propositions in my view um people are used to Gathering data um especially small organizations we work a lot with small organizations and they're used to Gathering data on spreadsheets so you've got a flat file spreadsheet that that has all of your clients and their addresses and whatnot but you can't make that produce the kind of results that you need so we help those agencies transition from this concept of okay I'm going to keep everything in an Excel spreadsheet to an actual data system where they can connect the data in you know in a relational database so that's how it brings value and then then getting the data back out so you you know data in is one thing you can collect it all day long but if you can't show if you can't pull it back out into a meaningful report that has a graph has percentages has um information then and and here's a really good example A lot of people count how many times they do something but they don't know how many times they do it for one particular client so we look not only at unduplicated efforts but unduplicated clients that's that's just one one way to look at it Crystal what would you add because part of this I would assume too is on the front end asking the right questions getting to know the nonprofit organization and what's going to be impactful for them partly so you can customize but two walk them and train them just you know like we're talking about walk us through some of the questions you like to ask on the front end the things that you're looking for so that you know okay here's how we can guide and direct for the right outcomes yeah so a lot of times what I'm looking for is what do you have to report okay and so I always tell people I like to start with the end in mind and what types of questions are you trying to answer okay and so what we typically do a lot of times organizations they have lots of forms and lots of information that they're Gathering and so we we sit down with them and determine okay how much of this information do you actually need and how much do you need to actually how much of it are you actually going to use to be able to show your stakeholders what you're doing and if what you're doing is effective and so I always tell people I start with the end in mind and then we customize and create everything and actually walk through their processes and kind of help them put their processes in the system I always tell them the system does not solve all your process issues but it does help you um to be able to have transparency within the organization and also be able to have some accountability as well in terms of how you're providing services and be able to report those outcomes and how you're actually being effective and changing the people's lives that you are serving yeah and I've got to believe there's a lot of aha moments just like you're talking about where just because they've been measuring it before doesn't mean it's actually something they need to really be measuring and maybe they're missing a lot of things that they really should be and when you look at okay you know Time Savings over here maybe you add a little bit more time to track different things over here and it's a little bit more on the front end but then obviously it leads to much better outcomes much better results much better information um and so I think there's probably a lot of aha moments are there any that come to mind as you're working you don't have to name the nonprofit but just those type of aha moments where it's like okay let's really sit down and look at the landscape of everything and let's figure out what you really need to be tracking what we're really trying to you know achieve is the outcomes and let's kind of revamp this whole process we have a couple of organizations that like to work together and so I can think of a few right now that have more like Networks and so they've been like referring clients to one another for many years but there's no true way to kind of show show what's happening with the clients and how they're um actually you know the outcomes and if the referrals are actually working and so we've helped several different networks of organizations that um are working together to serve a client make referrals have that transparency in their process um being able to see like how long does it take to actually be able to get a referral through and kind of getting those days shortened so that people are getting served faster and so that I I noticed that is one of the bigger ones especially when it comes to organizations trying to work together but there's a lot most organizations that I work with like Dy said they've been using spreadsheets for so long that they they haven't really seen the true outcomes like they're actually going through and counting on paper or on spreadsheet so even just being able to easily push a button and get that information that you need is a a huge um a lot of progress for them and a huge benefit for each organization so oh you got anything it it and and it's hard it's it's really hard for people to get to to change their mindset to say okay I have to devote a certain portion of my day every day to entering data in this system or else you get to the end of the week or the end of the month and there's way too much to enter at one time so it has to become um part of the culture and when I started this um 10 years ago um I I had um I started working with Mya and um Mya had a data system they needed to CH it was an old outdated data system they needed to change to just keep up with people who were applying for emergency services um but they were still uh based on paper um they were using then putting the paper in the computer and and using that to to process data which was a big step forward um 2020 came along and everybody's office closed and all the people um who who were used to walking into Mya front door and filling out a form all of a sudden had to did like what do we do we completely changed their system they no longer use paper they enter everything the client enters everything on online into their our data system and Mya processes that information electronically including all the uploads of copies of their lgw bill or their lease or their rent statement or whatever it is that they're applying for so it's a complete change in the way we think about how we work and that's kind of what we do you know even if Co hadn't come along that's what we try to do with a lot of our clients change the way they think about how they work yeah and carry that into I think the the big picture of you know why this matters in the Community because just like you're talking about you're helping nonprofits to operate more efficiently and effectively that allows them to increase their impact share results show the results in the storyline which leads to more funding opportunities and so I think by empowering and equipping and providing what would be a very robust service to help the smaller nonprofits to me there's a big ripple effect in the community of this has big tangible benefits for all of us in terms of improving outcomes share a little of your thoughts around the big goal for co-action net my dream and and I still have it um it's it's not realized yet but it it might be someday I would really like to see a day when a lot of different agencies actually shared one database so that I could go in and and and this is hard for agencies to to to get their head around because sort of like my client is my client and I'm the only one that can serve my client but I may be serving the client with this service and the client is being served by another agency with a similar service we don't want to duplicate the service we want to enhance the service I would like to get to a day when and organizations are not afraid to share the data and clients are not afraid to have their data shared so that um you could go in and look at a picture of someone's life and needs from a social service perspective and say this client um their needs are being met in over here but not over here and what is the best organization that could meet their needs over here and we are not afraid to share information about what we're doing it's a big leap for for where we are you know people are concerned about data privacy so am I our system is totally hpoc compliant it is totally uh safe and secure all the data is encrypted you know you have to have a password to get in the system and use it um with the right agreements between organizations and and permission from the client this is not impossible to do it doesn't violate any privacy standards um it's all a matter of getting the correct permissions and I think in the long run it could have a huge benefit for our clients and our organizations yeah and I think these are important conversations to be having so uh that's why I love you know being able to have you come on the show wrap up with where we can go to learn more about coaction net where can we go to take next steps so website phone number where would you direct us to go so you can um find us at coaction net.org and coaction net spelled with two n so c o a c t i o n NE t.org and um we have a form there if you're interested in working with us you fill that form out and we'll make contact with you and we'll get started well Crystal doy thank you for all you do to power the good to help nonprofits thank you for coming on the show thank you for having us thank you hi and Botham 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