Preble Street automates critical processes
to secure funding in more strategic ways

Preble Street responds to crises of homelessness, housing scarcity, hunger,
and poverty in Maine through its shelters, street outreach, emergency
food initiatives, health services, anti-human-trafficking services, and other
partnerships and programs. “It’s a constantly adapting environment to
make sure we are giving people what they need,” said Data Systems Project
Manager Nicole Holt, who has been on staff at the Portland-based nonprofit
for a dozen years.

When Preble Street delivers vital services, the results are transformative.
“My life changed from being completely homeless, sleeping in a tent, and
living in chaos from moment to moment to maintaining my recovery and
having a steady place to stay,” one Portland resident recently shared of his
experience with Preble Street’s Homeless Opioid User Service Engagement
(HOUSE) program.

The nonprofit couldn’t provide these life-changing programs and services
without the fundraising and grant funding that Holt supports, so she applies
the same spirit of adaptation that drives the nonprofit’s frontline initiatives
to her behind-the-scenes work. In recent years, she has drawn even more
on the extensibility of Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT by using its Certified
Connectors to the Microsoft Power Platform to build automations that make
workflows hyper-specific to Preble Street’s needs.

These workflows enable new possibilities, including processes that help
Preble Street connect more personally with volunteers who have high
capacity for giving. “Once we saw how powerful the tool was when used
with Raiser’s Edge NXT, it was pretty eye-opening,” Holt said.

Game-changing Workflow Improvements

Holt started without a background in software development or coding
when she began exploring how to use the Microsoft Power Platform, which
includes the dynamic workflow automation capabilities of Microsoft Power
Automate. But she has drawn on Blackbaud’s helpful community of support,
which has enabled her to build skill and expertise.

Raiser’s Edge NXT users can easily access templates and tutorials through
Blackbaud’s free Microsoft Power Platform resource library and the peerdriven Blackbaud Community, which features an engaged Microsoft Power
Platform user group that Holt contributes to and also looks to for advice
and inspiration.

Holt got started during the early months of the pandemic, when Preble
Street’s development director encouraged her to join the Blackbaud’s
Accelerator classes, which are now available on demand. Preble Street was
in the thick of COVID response and had paused a capital campaign to steer
giving to pressing needs. “We had such a surge in donor activity that we
really were capping out our ability to effectively process things.”

To streamline, she introduced an automated daily large-gift reporting
process adapted from free Blackbaud resources. The process alerts staff
when major gifts arrive so they know to start next steps in stewardship. “It
was a game-changer for us. Once we had that first workflow, with that really
simple overnight gift digest email that goes out to the right people, we were
able to see the value … and expand on that.”

She estimates that the gift digest can save staff up to an hour of work a day,
or about five hours a week, and a recent automated workflow that links critical
gift documentation stored in Microsoft’s SharePoint to Raiser’s Edge NXT
records can save a similar number of hours. Staff, in turn, can direct that time
to more strategic work. “When we take that administrative burden off staff,
they are able to engage in more creative problem solving,” Holt explained.

Committed to Supporting Each Other

In two and a half years, with the support of the Blackbaud Community and a
growing set of Blackbaud resources, including Skills Labs posted on YouTube
from the Blackbaud Developers’ Conference, Holt has already introduced 20
or so automated business processes to Preble Street. And as her strategic role
in process improvement has evolved, she has expanded her efforts to include
departments beyond the development team.

Some of the automations create administrative efficiencies. Some promote
data hygiene. And some allow Preble Street staff who do not have direct
access to Raiser’s Edge NXT to provide information that flows directly into
the platform’s records for the purposes of tracking mission-critical grant
projects. Holt’s colleagues welcome the improvements: Preble Street’s grants
team has credited her process automations with helping them achieve their
funding goals.

It was a grants project management workflow she created for Preble Street
and shared with Blackbaud Community that earned her the Community
Award at the Blackbaud Developers’ Conference. For her contributions,
she received an innovation grant award that allowed Preble Street to
partner with a Blackbaud Power Platform expert on a complex automation
that ties into VolunteerHub, a Blackbaud partner that supports volunteer
management and coordination.

The integration of VolunteerHub with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT and
Blackbaud’s ResearchPoint already allowed Preble Street to pinpoint
volunteers who are or could be high-capacity donors. The added
automation allows Preble Street staff to determine ahead of time when and
where those volunteers will be on-site and use this advance knowledge to
arrange additional cultivation efforts. The template is available free and
open-sourced for anyone else who wishes to use it as a starting place for
their own process improvement projects.

Holt pointed back to the Blackbaud Accelerator course, the library of
resources, and the camaraderie of the Blackbaud Community, which
connects representatives of many social good organizations, for making it
all possible.

“There’s so much democratization of information in the Blackbaud
Community. There aren’t gatekeepers. Everyone is just committed to helping
folks out,” she said. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that I took the time to
engage with the Blackbaud Community and with the learning. It gave me
the space to think about things in a different way.”