Project News

Elementary school principals have to wear a dizzying array of hats: educator, manager, counselor, disciplinarian, and other classic school administration functions.  When donor database manager is added to the mix, as is the case at private schools, even the most talented individual needs outside help.

Gail Harrell, the principal of Holy Family School, a Catholic elementary school, is one such individual.  She recognized that the school's current ad hoc system of recording donors via different spreadsheets and written logs was insufficient.  She asked CWR to help its transition to a centralized donor management system.

Her request came at a serendipitous moment for us as we recently welcomed to our team Jason Rieckewald-Schmidt.  Jason is a veteran donor information manager and oversaw the database at City Team, a large nonprofit that has over 200,000 donors and $10 million in contributions.  Although Holy Family's system is a fraction of City Team's size, Jason notes that at the basic level, "best practices are best practices and they apply to any nonprofit regardless of scale." 

Moreover, CWR will implement the donor database software that is right sized for Holy Family School: a package called GiftWorks which is produced by a partner organization of ours.  CWR welcomes the opportunity to build Holy Family's new system from the ground up in a way tailor made for our client.

This project is our first with an educational institution and we expect many more to come.  The issues facing any school cut across diverse, complex, and interrelated fields.  We believe the array of professional skills found on our team is well suited to provide the right solutions.  And the cause of children's well being is especially motivating for many members of our team. 

We look forward to helping other school principals fit into their many hats.