Recently the Clear Launch team was given a unique opportunity to give back to the community. The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas contacted us about providing technology support to another Austin-based organization called Creative Action.
The Entrepreneurs Foundation was founded to foster philanthropy and community engagement by connecting entrepreneurs and nonprofits. Their mission aims to improve corporate culture by developing partnerships in the pursuit of charitable activities. The results are empowered community involvement and stronger corporate teams.
As a company, we were inspired by the work of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, and the timing was right for us. We were seeking a meaningful way to contribute our services for a positive purpose. We felt fortunate to support the good work of Creative Action.
Creative Action is an arts-based youth development organization that provides interactive learning, on-site programs, and community events. Their mission is to inspire young people to become creative thinkers and confident leaders in their communities. Creative Action guides young people toward a brighter future in their careers and personal relationships by advocating cultural and self-exploratory learning through the visual and performing arts.
Creative Action services over 100 schools across five school districts. Each year that translates to over 45,000 program hours and serving approximately 22,000 youth. It was a massive endeavor to keep track of communications and program data, especially given the shifting administrations of each school from year to year.
Creative Action needed a custom technology solution that could help them manage data within Zoho CRM and export it to specific data forms where it could be used while communicating with school liaisons and during program management activities. This allowed them to quickly retrieve documented program information and make quick updates to CRM data.
Given the task at hand, we analyzed the existing processes and reviewed how Creative Action used technology for their operations. Although they did not consider themselves “technologists”, the team that coordinated school and community programs at Creative Action had a clear vision of what they needed and what the benefits would be for a custom solution. This solid understanding resulted in a much easier discovery process from which we could offer technology solutions to fit their current model of production.
We developed new apps that integrated all of their necessary data into Creative Action’s CRM, and collaborated with the Creative Action team to explore how the new apps could bring efficiency to the process of program coordination and alleviate bottlenecks in their day to day activities. Now, Creative Action is able to create dashboards, generate reports, and quickly monitor improvements in their programs. They log manuscripts, dates, times, and appointments and can easily retrieve information.
We consider ourselves incredibly lucky to have worked with the Entrepreneurs Foundation and Creative Action to support afterschool programs and creative learning. We are proud of the partnership that was developed and the important work we completed as a group. Creative Action is more efficient as a team, there is greater coordination in school and community programs, and Clear Launch is stronger as a company.
