Good Done Great
Industries:
Non-Profit / CharityChallenge
Technology provider and social enterprise Good Done Great wanted to turn the philanthropic efforts of corporations and foundations into measureable and successful impacts.Solution
Good Done Great delivers powerful information technology tools to its clients, built on Progress application platform as a service, that help them achieve more and do more good by managing and monitoring philanthropy.
Result
Progress application platform as a service gave Good Done Great the technical strength to deliver a range of applications to its corporate and philanthropic clients. In each case, the ease of use, flexibility, and functionally helped clients embody the philanthropic goal of the company – doing good in a truly great way.
Full Story
Challenge
The impulse to do good is everywhere. Individuals often reach for their checkbooks when they see the consequences of a natural disaster or some pressing, unmet social need. Yet sometimes people pause, either because the act of giving has complexities or because they worry about whether their help will be accepted or applied constructively.Corporations – as well as philanthropies themselves – often have the same impulses and similar concerns. David Barach and Earl Bridges, co-founders of Good Done Great, aim to address both aspects of the problem, simplifying the processes associated with charitable activities and also enhancing the flows of information needed to manage and measure results. Thanks to their vision and technology from Progress application platform as a service (aPaaS), Good Done Great has turned into a fast-growing provider of software, strategy, and services for corporations and grant-giving organizations.
Good Done Great is a social enterprise made up of committed professionals with extensive experience both working and volunteering at nonprofits, and developing solutions at nonprofit technology companies. Its team is dedicated to making a lasting impact through its social mission, helping to support the good works done by clients’ organizations and partners. The company is even organized as a pioneering B Corporation (social enterprise) – a new kind of corporate structure that emphasizes social utility over profit.
Good Done Great helps its clients create and organize their giving and corporate social responsibility strategies for maximum impact. It makes a difference through a combination of consulting services and applications designed to enhance the value and effectiveness of philanthropy. Regardless of where an organization is in its philanthropic journey, Good Done Great’s integrated solutions enable clients to leverage their giving or CSR efforts, to build highly-effective programs and campaigns, and to engage their stakeholders, while driving results that enable both businesses and society to prosper.
Barach explains that the company's initial foray into application development and services offerings began with efforts built on QuickBase by Intuit, but those efforts soon ran into limitations. “With QuickBase, things were out of our control from a technical and pricing perspective, which caused a lot of problems in client relations,” he said. For example, QuickBase keeps all data in expensive persistent RAM. Furthermore, Quickbase did not offer a native public facing portal; that had to be built internally by Good Done Great.
Solution
Integrated, Brandable, Easy-to-Use Technology
By contrast, with Progress aPaaS, Good Done Great was able to install the software in their own private cloud and integrate it within their brand. “This allows us to control costs and manage the entire relationship for our clients,” notes Barach.
Although transitioning from QuickBase to Progress aPaaS took some effort, Good Done Great’s staff was able to make the move quickly and without glitches. Furthermore, once applications were rebuilt in Progress they were clearly functionally superior. “All of our clients stated that the experience was leaps-and-bounds better than with QuickBase,” noted Barach.
Among the most crucial differences for clients was security; there was less comfort with the QuickBase API for public facing features and “Progress has continued to be diligent and responsive in addressing any emerging issues,” Barach notes.
Progress aPaas also enabled Good Done Great to address the needs of large, multinational and global organizations. Not only was the functionality greater, but Progress aPaaS included native multilingual support. “We would never have been able to reach out to companies of this caliber using QuickBase; but once we moved over to Progress aPaaS, the momentum changed,” said Barach. Today, Good Done Great counts among its clients leading companies such as Gulfstream, TEDCO, Marriott, and Driscoll’s, a leading supplier of fresh berries.
Not only does Progress aPaaS work well within a private cloud, it also supports customers on the go, with a Web-based user interface and portal structure that allows access to functionality anywhere, anytime. And using a Progress API, Good Done Great is now considering how to enhance support for mobility, too.
Good Done Great’s offerings include:
- Grants Management. Good Done Great aims to “delight” grant makers with a simple and streamlined process. This can help organizations be more efficient, with moves management, defined workflows and better communications and reports. Most importantly, it helps organizations make the best grants and achieve the highest impact in their community.
- Corporate Social Responsibility. Volunteer tracking, matching gifts, dollars for doers, annual giving, United Way, event and sponsorship tracking, or any other program that a company wants to undertake can be done better. Good Done Great can raise the level and quality of corporations’ efforts and allow them to demonstrate program effectiveness, fiscal accountability, and good stewardship, magnifying their impact to their communities.
Result
From a management perspective, Barach says that Progress aPaaS has made all the difference. With QuickBase, when an app is built, “that's it,” noted Barach. Changes or updates are difficult or impossible. By contrast, Progress aPaaS supports regular updates and can push changes out to different customer areas with ease. “It has been a game changer for us in terms of our ability to develop and improve,” he said. Furthermore, those capabilities have contributed to more manageable and predictable costs.
For Good Done Great’s customers, the inherent flexibility of Progress aPaaS means it is possible for them to add or adjust many functions. “Depending on what type of app they are working with, new functionality can be delivered through our professional services, if necessary,” adds Barach. However, in many cases, customers are able to make important changes on their own, without requiring actual administrative access or help, he explains.
Powered by Progress, Good Done Great has big plans. “We want to continue providing amazing tools to philanthropists that are doing good, whether it is the corporation itself, their staff or a foundation,” says Barach. “And, at some point we may even expand out into other parts of philanthropy because our focus is really about making an impact,” he notes.
Where does he see the company going? “We want to expand our solution set and applications. We want to be able to integrate with other providers in the sector through uses of APIs in order to better provide more comprehensive information to philanthropists. And we would like to provide better ways to measure impact,” Barach explains.