501c3 Management Database Optimization

Anton_Preisinge · ‎Jun 04, 2018

I am the founder and director of Northwest Hospitality, a 501c3 nonprofit started in 2016 focused on programs to help people living in the streets of Washington state. I’ve been having a great time running our entire nonprofit on Airtable since we got started and my main database is a beast. While I’m very proud of everything it does, this main database could really benefit from an hour or two of expert review; I suspect there are several things that can be optimized.

In addition, I’m struggling to build a homeless resource database that will be an incredible tool if I can do it the way I envision. One of our programs is hospitality kits which include health and hygiene essentials as well as a curated printout of local resources. The goal is to have these lists specific to regions in Washington like King County, Kitsap County, Whatcom, Snohomish, East Seattle, etc. Building the database in Airtable and using the blocks to format the printed versions is only half the battle as I also want the lists to be available for searching on my website in a user-friendly format. Since I’ll be doing all this curation work it will be nice to have the whole thing public. I can do most of this myself no problem but I’ve made a couple attempts at the base and keep getting tripped up on how exactly to structure it. I expect it’s something that would take an expert 20-30 minutes to figure out and optimize.

I can’t share the base directly here because it has protected donor information in it, but I will give full access to a copy of the base to anyone willing and able to volunteer a couple hours to help me with these projects. I don’t expect it will take much more time than that, I should just need to be told what to do and I can do a majority of the grunt work myself. Volunteer time can be recorded and reported if requested and we would be very happy to thank you officially on our website in gratitude for your efforts. I am hoping to find a volunteer but make me an offer if you are interested an unable to donate time and we can try to work something out.

Thank you very much,

Anton Preisinger
Northwest Hospitality - Director

Northwest Hospitality

Northwest Hospitality combats local poverty by coordinating community efforts to distribute essential resources to our homeless neighbors. Donations collected by NWH go, 100%, toward those resources and details of our operation are fully transparent....

info@nwhospitality.org
206-212-1398

Devin_Balkind · ‎Sep 22, 2018

Check out this template and open source project for your homeless services resource base and accompanying directory website: Templates

Anton_Preisinge · ‎Sep 23, 2018

Hi Devin,

This is really cool, thank you for getting in touch. Have you seen what I’ve put together so far? I love your front end.

One of the primary needs out of my database is the ability to print out physical lists curated for specific regions that we can put in our hospitality kits. I think I could make it work on the back end with the Page Designer Block as I’ve done with mine: https://airtable.com/shrCTOwaZpOjiZgkz

Thanks again, I’m looking forward to discussing this with you and/or your team more.

Devin_Balkind · ‎Sep 26, 2018

Maybe we can make a deal.

You do your best putting your data into open referral format and add your page designer layouts to the template.
I will review, make appropriate changes and then deploy a directory front end for you.

Thoughts?

Anton_Preisinge · ‎Oct 03, 2018

Hi Devin, sorry it took me so long to get back to you, we just had our big annual benefit and that monopolized my time there for a bit. I’m definitely interested, how do I get started? My only hesitation is all the work I’ve put into creating something that works for me already…even if it isn’t as polished. Is there any way to transfer entries from my current database into your open referral format? Maybe I can download a .csv and format it properly to be imported into a database set up to match your format? I currently have 273 offices from around Washington state in my database and that’s hardly a drop in the water…but still not something I relish doing again :winking_face:

Thanks, let me know what you think,

Anton