How do you take the wealth of data that nonprofits gather as a part of performing intakes and follow-ups and offering their services and leverage it for improved efficiency and quality reporting to funders? REDF worked with Dayspring to deploy a Web-based system to do that across its portfolio of social enterprises.
Client
REDF, a San Francisco-based fund providing Bay Area non-profits with financial and business resources. Formerly known as the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, REDF began as a philanthropic venture of George Roberts of private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts.
Situation
REDF serves the San Francisco Bay Area by supporting non-profit corporations seeking to employ disabled, homeless and otherwise employment compromised adults and youth. With a growing portfolio of investments in a variety of local businesses, REDF needed a means to assess each business’ success. The data collection and reporting needed to address both conventional profit and loss figures as well as the less conventional social benefits to the target population. Such reporting would allow REDF to measure each non-profit’s lasting, positive impact on the lives of its employees, and would insure REDF’s funders that the dollars invested were producing the desired outcome.
REDF had a vision for creating custom software to track social outcomes across its portfolio of organizations. Data would be tracked at each organization, fed into a central database, and analyzed per organization and on a portfolio-wide level.
REDF also wanted to design and develop custom database systems for each portfolio organization. These custom systems would allow the organizations to center each client’s case information online, eliminating a tedious paper file system and giving those involved in each case immediate access to each client’s ongoing care.
Execution
In collaboration with REDF partner BTW informing change, Dayspring developed a Web-enabled system that provides each client organization with its own on-site database and allows them to automatically transmit data to a central repository for over twenty social purpose enterprises. Dayspring has since worked with REDF to develop a later stage version of this system, modernizing the technology to create more efficient data collection and streamlined analysis.
Dayspring also developed comprehensive database systems that suit the unique needs of various organizations, enabling users with a variety of roles to perform such functions as program management and case management, tracking of service utilization, and custom reporting. The client entry data integrates with REDF’s social outcome tracking, allowing portfolio organizations to input data once for both REDF reporting and their own reporting and tracking needs.
Dayspring has served as REDF’s custom software and Web development partner since 1998.