015 – Building Your Own Tech Platform with Greg Harrell-Edge of CoachArt

Resources:

• Masters of Scale podcast
• How I Built This podcast
• First Round Capital blog
• Positive Equation
• Leading Good

Get in touch:

• Website: https://coachart.org/
• Email: greg@coachart.org
• Become a CoachArt Ambassador: https://coachart.org/healthcareambassador

 

Full Transcript

Spencer Brooks 00:05

Welcome to Health Nonprofit Digital Marketing, where a podcast for nonprofit marketing and communications leaders, using the internet to reach and engage people with health issues. I’m your host Spencer Brooks of Brooks digital, a digital agency for health nonprofits. Today I’m joined by Greg Harrell-Edge. Greg is the executive director at CoachArt. They’re a nonprofit that provides free arts and athletics lessons for kids impacted by chronic illness. So, Greg, I’m beyond excited to have you on the show today. I think we have a great, great topic lined up. But I’d love for you to just start by giving listeners a brief overview of who you are and what you do.

Greg Harrell-Edge 00:45

Sure. And thanks so much for having me, Spencer, I think what you will do is fantastic. So CoachArt is an organization, as you said, free arts and athletics, kids with chronic illnesses. One of the key things for us is that ultimately, when people think about sick kids, they often imagine those kids in the children’s hospital. And a lot of the nonprofits that serve sick kids are geared towards going into the Children’s Hospital. But there’s actually only 220 children’s hospitals nationwide and 20 million kids that have a really serious diagnosis that would qualify them for a program like CoachArt. So, the reality is, these kids are in homes, often really isolated in neighborhoods all around us. And everybody who’s listening probably has kids impacted by chronic illness in your community that might be homeschooled or might not be able to be parts of local arts and athletics programs. So essentially, what CoachArt does is match volunteers with those kids who used to go to the kids’ homes, for one on one, but also group programming that we facilitate. And so, I came on to the organization, the organization was founded in 2001, I joined as executive director in 2016. And one of the things that I’ve tried to bring to the organization is that, you know, the programs that we do, it was apparent right away, what a big impact that they make. But at the time, we’re only serving kids in LA and San Francisco. And so basically, I wanted to sort of take an innovative approach and see how we can use technology and also marketing, to be able to scale up and serve more of those 20 million kids nationwide, who would qualify for the program.

Spencer Brooks 02:27

That’s such a fantastic mission. It’s really one of the reasons when you reached out that I, you know, I thought you’d be a great fit and CoachArt would be a great fit for the show. And you mentioned, Greg, this idea of matching volunteers with kids it seems very central to what it is that you do. So, I imagine that can be a little bit of a challenge. But what you showed me earlier was this great digital method that you’ve developed to match volunteers with kids. So, could you tell listeners a little bit more about that?

Greg Harrell-Edge 03:00

Absolutely. So, our centerpiece app is called CoachArt Connect. And we launched this in 2018. It’s available, there’s a browser-based version, it’s in the Apple App Store, as well as Android. And essentially, it’s online training, online background check. And then to get a login and to be able to see all of the CoachArt kids who are in our program. And so, what this solves for is something that we used to do something called manual matching. And so, Spencer, if you were to join as one of our volunteers, we would reach out to you the way you’re the way we used to do it, we would have reached out to you and said, what activity do you want to teach? So, we would call you up, what would you say what’s something in art or athletic activity that you might teach?

Spencer Brooks 03:45

Drums, I play drums. In fact, not what six feet to my right is a drum kit now you know, and the listeners know, my secret. So yeah, drums would be a great one.

Greg Harrell-Edge 03:58

Cool. So, I bet there’s a kid with a chronic illness within 10 miles of you who would love to learn drums from you. But the way that we used to do it was we would call you up you would say okay, I can teach drums, we would look in our database of the kids who weren’t currently in a match. And only we had access to that information. And we would start calling up some of those families and say, Hey, we’ve got a new volunteer named Spencer, he can teach drums, do you want to learn from him? When are you available? So, then the families would say, How about Tuesday night? How about Saturday afternoon, we would call you back. And we would say, Hey, we’ve got this one family. This is when they’re interested. And you would say well, that’s too far for me to drive. But I could drive this far in this other direction because of traffic on a Sunday. So, it used to take seven hours of staff time, manually matching the kids and the volunteers back and forth. And so this is an information problem. It’s what’s the activity, when and where. So with our new app coach or connect which launched three years ago, now you go through online training, online background check, and you can just see the CoachArt kids who are not currently in a match, click on the student you want to work with propose what times you would be available, and hit submit. And that child’s parent instantly gets a text message that says, hey, we’ve got a new coach Spencer, he can coach drums, he’s available at these times, the parent chooses if one of the time works for them, if both of you all agree on a time, we send you both an email and CC our program manager, and then that child is removed from the app, because they’re currently in a match. And so what used to take over seven hours of staff time, now takes less than seven minutes of staff time. And our team gets to focus on, after the matches are made, making them really great and successful. And so, they’ve loved that as well. So, it’s just a much more scalable model.

Spencer Brooks 05:42

I love that, that’s such a success story. I can imagine that you’re talking about scaling. And I, you can correct me if I’m wrong. But it seems like if you wouldn’t have solved that problem, that scaling would have been so much harder, if you would have had to spend seven hours of staff time every time you matched a kid with a coach, and then multiply that across the country. So, are you able to do more? I mean, I guess the answer is obvious. But maybe the question I would want to ask is, how much more have you been able to do now that you freed up the staff time to focus on other things,

Greg Harrell-Edge 06:21

Yeah, our lesson hours have grown by about 50% per year, from 2018 to 2019 2020. And now on pace, this year 2021, on average, about 50% each year, whereas our budget is essentially about the same as it was in 2018. And so, we’re able to do a lot more and do it more efficiently.

Spencer Brooks 06:41

So, I’m curious as well, on the time and the effort that it took you to develop this because I think of you know, developing your kind of your own custom application as being quite a lot of work. So, was that a significant effort? And how did you handle that?

Greg Harrell-Edge 07:04

Yeah, great question. So, you know, it’s something where if you look at all of the startups that are started every day, people are doing this all around us when you look at the startup community in tech. And so, what we, one of the first things that we really tried to do is instill that sort of culture and a culture of agile methodology and a culture of, you know, MVP, minimum viable product and putting something out there. There’s a great quote from the How I Built This podcast that they referenced a lot, that if you’re not embarrassed about the first version of your app that you put out, then you waited too long. So one of the very first things that we did was adopt a lot of that methodology on our team, which was a culture shift, and something that some folks on our team got really excited about right away, and some folks really had to warm to. Now that said, it’s still a process, right, we had, we looked around at what other nonprofits were doing, we also looked around at what a lot of for profit companies were doing, we eventually found a technical solution that worked really well for us and a model that we could sort of base it off of, and contracted with a third party development agency that specialized in that type. And all in all, it took about a year and a half, to build. And then it’s been a really iterative process ever since then. And sort of adopting the product mentality and constantly making tweaks, constantly evaluating what’s working and adding new features.

Spencer Brooks 08:37

There’s so many words there that are that are making me smile, such as agile, and MVP, and iterative and all these, all these words that resonate so deeply. And it’s actually, it’s very refreshing to hear someone that I have the same perspective as well. So I do want to ask you, on that topic, before we kind of move on to some of the other questions I have, that culture of thinking of these digital properties that you have, right, like that could be your website, or it could be this volunteer app that you have, thinking of that as a product, and thinking of this at this minimum viable product that you could launch? That’s not something that is, I found, very common in the nonprofit space. So, what were some of the some of the challenges and how did you address that culture shift?

Greg Harrell-Edge 09:30

It’s a great question as well. So, you know, I think it’s unfortunate that it’s not more common. And I’d start by saying, my hope is that it becomes a lot more common. So, I got involved in the nonprofit sector 12 years ago, now. And one of the first things that was really interesting to me about it was how little the nonprofit sector used either technology or marketing, sort of two of the key drivers of entrepreneurism today to scale impact, and I remember thinking five years from now, there’s going to be so many new and innovative organizations that are doing this. And while we’ve seen some of that, and we’re proud of what we’ve done, we’ve done a code chart. My hope is that that the next few years really are when a lot of that mindset starts to become more common in the nonprofit sector. So, for our team, you know, like I said, there were some folks who were instantly excited by the possibility. And then there were some folks who were, you know, a little bit hesitant. And ultimately, it’s something where I think successful results are what, you know, get buy in from, from everybody involved. And a lot of the buzzwords actually, that I just used, we don’t use a lot of jargon internally, what we don’t want to feel like as a culture is that we’re just borrowing jargon from tech in an empty way. And then it’s not really meaningful. And so, one of the things that we talk about a lot is let’s take the concepts from tech, but without the jargon, and have it be something that hopefully people see, and so everybody on our team cares a lot about helping kids with chronic illnesses. And when they first see the numbers going up, and we’re able to serve more and more kids, it becomes easier and easier for people to buy in.

Spencer Brooks 11:17

I think it’s a great point that you made about not necessarily stealing the jargon, but maybe repurposing it or making it your own. I do think that there’s a little bit of a conceptual divide, I think, between someone who’s working at a nonprofit, and then the stereotypical Silicon Valley Tech employee, those are two vastly different cultures. And I would totally agree, I think that there’s some, there’s a lot of concepts that the nonprofit world can absolutely take and repurpose. And I think, that’s a piece of advice that I will take to heart as well. And use in our own work.

Greg Harrell-Edge 11:54

One thing specifically about that, that we always note, I think it’s interesting that you see people in tech, or you know, tech companies that are often doing very transactional things, but talk about them in this big world changing way, right. And I don’t know if anybody saw the WeWork documentary recently. But that’s a perfect example where ultimately, they were taking office spaces, dividing them into smaller office spaces, but the way they talk about their work is We and community and that we’re building a different world. And one of the things I think in a nonprofit, is we sometimes do the opposite, where we’re doing big world changing things, but talking about them really transactionally. And, and I think I’m as guilty of that, as anybody. And sometimes I think about the way, you know, the very introduction to this podcast, and is there a way that I can talk about our work differently than to say, we provide arts and athletics to kids impacted by chronic illness? And there probably is, and it’s probably something that I could and should be better about.

Spencer Brooks 12:57

That’s very well said. And I do think that maybe it’s in the day to day that we in the social impact sector get lost in the day-to-day work, and don’t really think about, oh, we are changing the world. And yeah, you know, tech shouldn’t be the only the only sector that gets to say that. And so I love that. I did want to ask you, Greg, kind of on the similar vein, perhaps. When it comes to technology, I imagine that COVID really up ended your operations, because I think at that point, you were doing a lot of in-person lessons.

Greg Harrell-Edge 13:37

Everything was in person, yeah, less than we’d ever done was in person.

Spencer Brooks 13:40

Okay, so then all the more, that’s a huge impact. So how did you go about pivoting when those in person lessons were just not an option anymore?

Greg Harrell-Edge 13:52

Yeah. So, you know, every lesson that we had done had been in person, we’d had, just over two years before we had launched this app and seen 50% growth. And then all of a sudden, volunteers can’t meet individually with kids. And so I’m really glad that you’ve mentioned culture so many times, because that’s one of the very first things that we leaned into. And we said, listen, every nonprofit right now is sitting back and thinking or so many nonprofits are sitting back and thinking, we’ve got to rethink a major part of what we do. But we have been building this culture of agility and pivots and you know, entrepreneurism and innovation for a couple of years now. And so for us, this is just a new pivot that we have to consider. And so you know, what we did was switched to, started using video conferencing, and doing the lessons over video conferencing. The very first month, two really interesting things happened. The first one is the number of lesson hours went up even more than it had been going up with the in person lessons. But then the second thing is our quality scores took a nosedive. And so again, we went back to that same idea and said, Okay, let’s try things. Let’s test. Let’s go back, let’s see what’s working. And over the next three months, we continued to make changes to our virtual curriculum, to the way we actually did the video conferencing. And after, at the three-month mark, our quality scores were actually exactly the same as what they were for the in person lessons. And then the lesson hours just continued to go up and up after that.

Spencer Brooks 15:39

That’s a fantastic story. And I I want to highlight that you were able to be agile, and I guess I’ll refrain from using buzzwords, but you were able to adapt and pivot. Because I can certainly imagine that a lot of nonprofits that faced a similar situation, tried to pivot to virtual events or teaching and then maybe they see this quality nosedive, that would be kind of disheartening. And so, I’m curious, do you still take those feedback metrics? And do you still learn and adapt right now, kind of what’s your process, even to this day?

Greg Harrell-Edge 16:19

Absolutely. And we’ve got a roadmap of features that we continue to add to our functionality and are constantly, you know, reviewing the feedback that we get. So, we do survey based feedback, we have automation, after each session. So, the coaches and the volunteers work together for eight weeks, they automatically get a survey, asking them, number one, if they want to keep going and keep working together, which 40% of them continue working together after the first eight weeks. And then what feedback they have for us. And so, we’re constantly assessing those quality scores, and qualitative and quantitative feedback, and then making adjustments to our roadmap of features for the app and other programmatic changes based on that.

Spencer Brooks 17:11

So, one thing that occurred to me, as you’re talking about that, as you’re collecting all this data, and it seems to be some pretty objective numbers on how well things are going. So when it comes to proving your impact, you know, whether that’s you’re sending out an annual report to your funders, or maybe you’re doing fundraising, has that enabled you to be more effective, and how you communicate, because you’ve collected that hard data?

Greg Harrell-Edge 17:40

Absolutely. And just the growth, you know, one of the things, I think, often when in nonprofit, we get stuck in a mindset of, well, how am I going to raise a bunch of money to go out and do something amazing. And, you know, again, going back to that idea of this incremental approach, I think if you can start to show upward trajectory, and that you’re growing, it makes it easier to fundraise, to turn around and tell people that, look, we have this success, we have this demand. And we want to keep this growth accelerating at the same speed. And so for us, we really think about volume, which we’ve talked about, the actual impact scores, and the data that proves that this is working, and then anecdotes, what are those individual stories and testimonials that show that this really has an impact and the type of impact that it has. And so as we, we’re approaching another fundraiser, our 20th anniversary fundraiser coming up on November 10, and we think about which parts of this story do we want to tell to that audience and in what ways, so that they get all three of those in a meaningful way?

Spencer Brooks 18:55

That’s some really, some great thoughts on that. Greg, and I wanted to ask you, on the topic of growth, how are you managing to scale coach art now that you’ve gone totally virtual?

Greg Harrell-Edge 19:09

So, one of the things, the virtual lesson model has allowed us to scale to new cities in a really exciting way. And so last year, we were able to start serving kids in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, New York City, and Portland, and they all are able to match one on one or attend our group programming via Zoom. So yeah, so scaling up to those nine cities. And then in December, we actually launched the second major update to the app. So what we consider version two of our cohort Connect app, where instead of just seeing the kids who live near you, you’re able to toggle back and forth between show me the kids who live within 10 miles of me or show me any coach art student anywhere in the America, sorted by how long that student has been waiting for a match. So that essentially, volunteers in one city are now able to schedule one on one matches with kids in another city. And so what this new version of the app, that we launched in December makes possible is for us to scale nationwide. And so we’re preparing right now for how we’re going to continue to grow and roll out the program, so that we make it available for any child with a chronic illness, anywhere in the country, and any volunteer with an arts or athletic skill, anywhere in the country to match with each other.

Spencer Brooks 20:36

That’s wonderful to hear. And the growth is really phenomenal, especially if you consider, you know, what you’re sharing at the beginning with, you know, being very local and in person. But I would imagine that scaling nationwide doesn’t come without its challenges. So what’s one thing that you’re working on right now that is particularly challenging to you? And are there any takeaways or lessons you might be able to share with listeners?

Greg Harrell-Edge 21:05

Absolutely. So essentially, right now, we’re trying to figure out the best go to market plan for donors. So how do we have a scalable fundraising approach that brings in donors all across the country to fund this work, for volunteers, and so a separate sort of marketing and go to market plan to find individuals with arts and athletic skills, but then thirdly, families impacted by chronic illness. And that’s one of the most interesting challenges that we’re working on right now is what is the best way to make this available, make this opportunity available to families impacted by chronic illness. And one of the key ways that we’re doing that is with a group called our health care ambassadors. And so this is something that anyone who works in the healthcare sector broadly, we’re inviting them to participate. It’s a group that meets once per quarter, to chat through the strategy questions about scaling and kind of marketing this opportunity to families impacted by chronic illness nationwide, from a partnership standpoint, from a marketing standpoint, they also vote on how to spend our healthcare Ambassador fund. So, every single member makes a monthly donation of some size to the fund. And then they get to vote on how that’s spent to most effectively achieve this goal of getting the word out to families. And then after this quarterly meeting, they give a response via survey and give us both qualitative and quantitative advice on what we should do. And so if anybody listening, given the nature of the audience that you have, is open for being part of this growth story that’s available at coachart.org/healthcare ambassador, which you can find on our on our website, coachart.org. And we would love to have more people be part of that group and continue to grow this group that meets once a quarter and helps weigh in on these strategy and scale questions.

Spencer Brooks 23:04

Absolutely. I’d echo that to listeners as well, I know that there are many folks here that might be listening that work at chronic illness organizations. And this is some great work that you’re doing. And so I encourage listeners, and I hope that that some of them get in touch with you and can help out there. I’d also like to ask you, Greg, just what, what resources you’d recommend to listeners who are trying to keep up on trends in the nonprofit marketing world?

Greg Harrell-Edge 23:40

Sure. So one of the things I personally really believe in and sort of you can imagine, based on the conversation that we’ve had, is to keep up on trends in the startup world as well, and to not think of nonprofit marketing and startup marketing as being as siloed as we sometimes think of them, and so, you know, I had referenced the Masters of Scale podcast, Reed Hoffman, you know, How I Built This, Guy Raz. There’s the venture capital firm, First Round Capital, does a really amazing blog, that it’s about marketing that’s got some really helpful tips. But if we are talking about just marketing, I tend to like the thought leaders in the nonprofit marketing space who pick and choose things from the startup world. And so as you mentioned, that was one of the ways that I had discovered your content and think that you really think the way that you think about nonprofit marketing is spot on. A couple of other thought leaders that I would spotlight there; Dana Snyder, and her site Positive Equation. She, I believe, was involved with American Idol earlier in her career and then got involved in nonprofits like Movember and really thinks about fundraising in a fascinating and scalable way. Leading good is a firm  helmed by a guy named Rod Arnold, who we’re actually working with him right now he had a background from Charity Water. So, in the nonprofit space you, you know, Dana with positive equation and Rod with leading good are three of the ones that most come to mind.

Spencer Brooks 25:15

I love that. And I appreciate, you know, the kind words as well, it means a lot. And I do want to give you an opportunity as well to give listeners an opportunity to get in touch with you if they’d like to learn more about your work. So, what are some good ways that listeners can contact you?

Greg Harrell-Edge 25:36

Absolutely, anybody can email me, Greg@Coachart.org, G, R, E, G, at coachart.org. You can find out more on our website, Coachart.org, which has got all of the host of ways that people can get involved as a volunteer if you know a family impacted by chronic illness, if you’re interested in those Ambassador programs. And so, I wouldn’t encourage and invite folks to get involved in any of those ways. But the number one most important thing that I really need to be doing as the ED over the next year or year and a half is pitching this story and talking to people about what CoachArt is trying to accomplish. And the ways that people could be part of this journey and be part of this story. And so, I welcome and invite anyone to reach out. And I would love to chat about getting involved in this journey.

Spencer Brooks 26:27

Great. Well, I’ll make sure to include your information, Greg in the show notes for listeners, not only your email, but the CoachArt website, as well as some of the resources you mentioned, links to the healthcare ambassador, program and everything else. So that does wrap up our show today. For listeners, we are new podcast. So please consider rating and reviewing us. Wherever you listen to this. It’s a huge help and make sure that people can find great interviews and resources and people like Greg and coach art. This show is also part of our thought leadership at Brooks digital. We’re a digital agency for health nonprofits, and we specialize in web strategy, design and development. So, if you like this podcast, feel free to go to our website. It’s Brooks.digital, you can find more of our insights and learn about our work. But with all that said, Greg, this was a fantastic interview. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Greg Harrell-Edge 27:27

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. And actually, if I could throw in one more plug for you, Spencer and I have a meeting tomorrow to review the CoachArt website and what our plans are for that. And so we really are fans of what you do and are excited to chat with you about potentially what we can do together with CoachArt’s mission, so excited to continue down this road with you as well.

Spencer Brooks 27:51

Me too. Well, thank you, Greg. You’re very, very kind. I’m looking forward to it as well.