How the Non-Profit Year Up is using Data, Technology, and Automation to Reimagine Access to Education

Dayle Hall:

Hi, you’re listening to our podcast, Automating the Enterprise. I’m your host, Dayle Hall. This podcast is designed to give organizations specific insights, best practices on how to integrate, automate, and transform the enterprise by bringing some of the most sharpest brilliant minds in the industry together for a discussion around how we can all be better in our roles.

Our guest today has over 27 years of experience in the technology industry. He’s focused on enabling business processes and promoting innovation from a senior and executive level vantage point. We’re very, very fortunate to have Gary Flowers, the Chief Information Officer of Year Up with us on this podcast today. Gary, welcome.

Gary Flowers:

Thank you, Dayle. Look forward to the conversation, and excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Dayle Hall:

Right. Well, I’m going to start with a couple of ice breakers just so I get to know you better and the audience can get to know you better too. So very quick questions and don’t need a lot of thinking about. Give me your quick, honest answer. Okay? Beer or wine?

Gary Flowers:

I wish I was refined enough to say wine, but I’m definitely more a beer person.

Dayle Hall:

Good call. Batman or superman?

Gary Flowers:

Well, so when you think about this, we’re talking about superheroes. So I’m definitely Superman. I think Batman is a rich man with a bunch of toys.

Dayle Hall:

Snow or surf?

Gary Flowers:

I’m a native Floridian, Dayle. So I definitely have to go with Surf because I’ve only physically seen snow less than, you know, two handful of times in my life. So I definitely prefer to surf.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. And I grew up in England, and I definitely prefer the beach and to surf because I know how cold is. Last book you read?

Gary Flowers:

Well, I’ll tell you, the last book I started which is the one right behind me, which is essential, which is the reading of the new Judge Jackson. Ketanji Jackson’s opinions. I’d love to say that I’m going to be able to make it through. But she is way, way more intelligent than I. It’s a tough read for us commoners, but it gives you some insight into her. So that’s the one I’m currently reading right now.

Dayle Hall:

That’s a good one. Good one. First concert you attended?

Gary Flowers:

Interesting. I had a conversation about this a couple of weeks ago. It was a MC Hammer concert in 1990, when I was a freshman in college in Tallahassee, Florida.

Dayle Hall:

Nice.

Gary Flowers:  

It was incredible. And I went to a concert last week with the Culture Tour with New Edition and Jodeci and Charlie Wilson. And that’s where that conversation came up to where was your first one.

Dayle Hall:

That’s awesome. No one did it quite like that guy.

Gary Flowers:

Absolutely.

Dayle Hall:

Okay, favorite word?

Gary Flowers:

Oh, man, I think my favorite word lately is privacy legacy. And that’s probably because- not probably, but that is because that’s something that, you know, really is on my mind. As I, Dayle, I’m about to turn 50 next week. So legacy is something that really, I find myself spending a lot of time thinking of.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, I’m not far away from that myself. So it’s definitely something on top of my mind. And then the last one for the icebreakers, the most overused word in business?

Gary Flowers:

I think currently, probably the most overused word is change. And I say that because everyone thinks that every nuance and every new thing that they asked you for is going to be such a miraculous change. I heard a quote this weekend during worship services, actually, that made me think of this that says that change occurs when you run into your discomfort and overcome your discomfort. The word change, I don’t know that applies to everything, whether it be business or life, as much as people are actually using it nowadays.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, I think it does scare a few people when you talk about that kind of thing. Because people talk about it’s an evolution of things. It’s just how things grow. I think a lot of things I talked to my team about as well, just from a marketing perspective, is we are always changing. What worked before might not work again. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it should be this big, scary thing. And I think a lot of people, a lot of vendors, a lot of people that you get marketing from, they’re constantly trying to make you think like, we’re not changing fast enough and left behind. I mean, that’s kind of a joke, but it shouldn’t be as scary as that, really.

Gary Flowers:

Absolutely. And when you get a lot of times, especially from a technology standpoint, you want to get your organization to a place where it’s continuous improvement. It doesn’t feel this much is big changes as much as it feels like I’m doing things better than I did it yesterday. Right? And once you do that better, you’re looking for the way to do it better tomorrow. So it’s just continuous improvement, as opposed to big change in big rocks. Now, in order to get to that, you have to accomplish some of those big rocks. But that shouldn’t be, to your point, the norm of every day. It should be continuous improvement versus large scale change.

Dayle Hall:

I’m sure some of that thinking is going to come out when we start talking about the work that you’re doing. So look, Year Up is a nonprofit designed to provide training program, tuition free to young adults, helping them access internships and employment opportunities right after that training. Prior to that, you’ve been in the tech industry for a couple of decades. But can you give us some background, Gary, of a little bit on your journey, where you started and how you kind of evolved and got to the current position at Year Up?

Gary Flowers:

Yeah. Absolutely, Dayle. I came out of school, as you said earlier, about 27 years ago. And I started out in management consulting. At the time, it was the big five firms, I think it’s the big four management firms now. And I was in that for about 10 years on and off. And when I say on and off, I was in it for four and a half years, got a divisional CIO position, did that for about a year. Didn’t feel I was quite ready for the tech exec landscape, so I went back into consulting to round myself out, if you will, for another four and a half years, so a total of about 10.

And then I dip my toe into technology executive position. So I’ve been a domestic and global CIO now for 17 years, four different CIO positions, yet decided to hang up my corporate cleats, if you will, about five years ago and focus on nonprofits and then move very quickly to equity-based nonprofits. I was doing that on my own with a small consulting firm that I was just doing myself, and Year Up came calling. And Year Up is a blend of two very distinct industries that I have been a CIO in, which is, of course, the education piece where we educate young adults and get them ready for internships and our Fortune 1000 clients that we have.

And then from a workforce management and placement standpoint, that was the other side of the CIO position that I had. And so combining those two and then speaking to what my core value system was, which is helping young adults get access to opportunities that would not be there before, Year Up was kind of, as they say, a slam dunk for me. So been here for about a year now, still excited as the day that I joined. And that’s a little bit about my journey from the beginning to where I sit now, Dayle.

Dayle Hall:

You talked earlier about the word legacy. I can’t imagine any better legacy than some of the work that you’re doing and that Year Up are doing. So let’s dig into that a little bit more. Tell me a little bit about what the vision is for Year Up. You’ve mentioned around helping these young adults get opportunities and grow. How does the company actually operate? How does everyone get involved?

Gary Flowers:

You know, Dayle, there’s two words that are key from a Year Up standpoint, is access and impact. And so there are two distinct user bases that we serve. We serve opportunity youth, the underserved communities of our country, and then we serve corporations. And so when we talk about access, we’re giving young adults access to opportunities into a path that they would not otherwise have had, quite frankly. But we’re also giving corporations access to a talent pool that they have, quite frankly, overlooked for decades.

The impact on that side, from a young adult standpoint, our average young adult that goes through our program, so you go through our learning and development program. Our standard model is six months of learning and development, but we have other programs that are less than six months. And then you’re in a internship with one of our Fortune 1000 clients for six months. The impact for the young adults is at the end of that journey, as you said before, it’s tuition free. So no student debt associated with it. And you come out with an average of, in the low to mid-40s, from an income standpoint. And for the communities that we serve, that’s life-changing. Right? That’s impactful in a way that, as they say, we’re teaching people to fish, if you will.

From the corporation standpoint, they are having an impact on society because they’re helping close the opportunity to buy. So it’s not just they’re doing something great for themselves and they’re having another pipeline, but they’re actually making a difference in our society by helping up close opportunity divide. And so that access and impact really describes, hopefully, what Year Up is all about.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. And I think you’ve probably read a bunch of things as I have, to call it the war on talent or finding talent, feels like there’s many opportunities. You don’t necessarily always look in the right places. What I really like about this is from a corporation’s perspective, like you said, we get access to this talent that you might not have been able to get access to before. It feels like, why is it taking so long? Why do these things come around? But how do you create that awareness and differentiate in your market to get potentially those talent in, and then raise the visibility with the organizations that can help.

Gary Flowers:

One of the pieces- there are a lot of organizations that train young adults. I don’t want you to think that the core academic training is our secret sauce. What we really do is not just about the academics. It’s about having a young adult be workforce ready. Right? We understand that working in corporate America, there’s a set of skills, there’s a set of things that you have to know on top of just knowing one plus one is two, right? The academic side of it. And we call those the essential skills. So we partner the academic with essential skills.

So that’s one of our differentiating pieces, because our corporations know they can go to who a community college and get someone that has an associate’s degree, right? So that’s the academic piece. But they know when one of our students come in, they’re going to be ready for day one of work, right? We teach time management, financial literacy. We teach belonging to our students to say, hey, you are going to be something new for these corporations, but teaching them the aspect of you belong in these arenas. So be comfortable, be confident in those things. So that’s one piece that makes us unique.

On the corporation side, quite frankly, we place interns in the third of the Fortune 500. So our relationship with those corporations makes it to where we’re not just educating you, but you should have a high confidence that you’re going to land a job. And we have, I don’t want to name, but we have some pretty nice logos that we’re associated with that we’ve built up over time. And we’ve built up over time from a delivery standpoint, and we’ve proved ourselves. So having those relationships is one of the things that differentiates us from our competitors as well.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. That’s great. It’s a brilliant cause. So now we know a little bit about the business. Let’s get onto the topic at hand, which is how you enable the great things to happen around the technology. Why don’t you give us an overview of how you’re using technology today? Potentially, is it helping on the different parts of those processes, getting to companies, providing the right education? How does key pieces of technology enable your business today?

Gary Flowers:

So Dayle, we have a certain amount of times, and we’ll pick a couple of them, right? Because just at a high level, we’ve put together a three-year technology roadmap, and we are in year one, which we quite frankly honestly call the foundation year. We’ve grown a lot. We’re going to- this is our 21st year of doing this. But as a lot of organizations that grow and grow fast, we haven’t always architected things correctly. And now, although we are going to serve a little less than 5,000 young adults this year, the goal is not to sit on our laurels. We realize 5,000 is a drop in a bucket. We want to 10x this thing.

And so we’re looking to use technology to streamline operations and to also use technology to allow us to scale. And those are really, what I would tell you, the top two pieces, right? In order to do that, in order to streamline operations, we got to plug some of the holes in that we’ve had in the past. Always used the analogy, you can’t build a skyscraper on quick sand. You got to firm up that foundation. And that’s a lot of the things that we’re focused on for this year. But once you firm up that foundation, right, and you’re able to take a look and identify these processes and say, I have 20 offices, we can’t do things 20 different ways. We need to streamline it and have the 80/20 rule as they say, right? So 80% of the offices do it the same way, but their intricacies in each region that we’re going to use that 20% to make sure that we’re servicing that geographic area correctly. Things like enrollment.

We were nominated for a Webby this year for our centralized enrollment application. We were also nominated for a Webby for our matching application that we put together, both in partnership and on top of Salesforce from a CRM standpoint. But those things were really designed to streamline operations, and not just streamline to make sure that they’re centralized, but to cut time. Speed to market matters. So if I’m enrolling someone, cutting time out in that enrollment process matters. Using less energy to match our young adults to the right internship opportunities, every hour that we’re using for that, we could be using to service more adults. So we took things like matching from days to hours.

Those are some examples I would talk about as far as enabling us to do that. Now, from a program delivery standpoint, Dayle, this is no shock and no surprise. COVID taught us, you can’t just sit in front of a classroom with people. You need a hybrid solution when it comes to training individuals. Now, like everyone else, we leaned on technology to pivot quickly. But as you know, earth was shut down pretty quickly, as I say, right? It was shut down pretty quickly. And so we’re continuing to understand, we can’t go back to the old normal. It’s the new normal. And that new normal includes hybrid delivery of what we’re doing from a learning and development standpoint. And that focus, technology enables that. It’s not just technology though, Dayle, it’s technology, as I said, and process.

So we’re trying to understand what part of that L&D process is better suited for online than in-person. But we don’t want to lose that in-person context because we do realize, what we also realize in the COVID times is that people can become very disconnected if you’re just looking at a talking head. So our hybrid model is something that we’re really looking at and working on. So as I said, streamlining, and then scale. What we’ve also realized is, well, now if I have a hybrid model, it’s easier are for me to introduce myself to new markets, because now I can have a centralized way of training at dev across the country. I don’t have to as much depend on, do I have the right instructor in Austin, if I want to go to Austin, right? Because I have a centralized curriculum that I can deliver remotely and focus on getting into that market so we can get those young adults in. So that’s where the scale piece comes in, right? Those are some examples of how we use things to streamline operations, but then also help us scale so we can get to that 10x desire that we have over the next 8 to 10 years.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. And I think whilst, obviously, COVID is no joke and has been awful for all of us, I think it has shown some people that there are other ways to operate and given us some potential growth areas, like you just said, which is finding- you don’t have to have someone in Austin to deliver a class anymore. You can bring that together, but you need to keep that connection. You need to make sure that happens. Did COVID impact, not just the training side, what about enrollment? Or did you have other challenges because of that? Was it just harder to get to your audience?

Gary Flowers:

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. From an enrollment standpoint, it’s easier to convince someone to enroll if you’re sitting in front of them than talking over the phone or just being on Zoom. But there’s also flexibility that came with that, right? Because now it’s easier, during those COVID times, it was actually easier for us to get time with certain individuals. So it’s a give and take. And that’s why I say, it’s all about hybrid delivery, right? I need to have options for whether it’s enrollment, delivery, alumni services, student services, retention. What we have learned, Dayle, during this time, which has been great for technology is the people understand that now. It’s easy to say, Oh, that would never work.

But we just went through something where we had to say, technologists had been saying before, What if you weren’t sitting in front of that person, what would you do? And the answer was always, Well, that’s just not our motto. That’s not the way- it’ll never get to that. So this pandemic has shown us the very thing that you think would never happen, can happen. So it’s better to investigate and explore those things before it’s forced upon you. And what COVID did, COVID is unfortunate. But one of the fortunate things from an IT standpoint, those purse strings started to open back up. People started to realize that, yes, I’m the CIO of Year Up, Dayle, and it pains me to say this, Year Up is not a technology organization.

All right. But what this did show us is that we need to be a technology-enabled organization. We need to be an organization that makes data-driven decisions. Right? So before, it was just the CIO and technology kind of saying these things. Now, it’s the organizations saying, okay, thank you technology for pivoting, but let’s get ahead of this. Let’s think about how we can use tech to be ahead so that in the nonprofit world, we can fulfill our mission and reach more students in the Year Up case. But in corporate America, it’s so that we can keep a competitive advantage over our competitors. Right? We got to stay a step ahead. And if we’re not data-driven, if we’re not tech-enabled and our competitors are, where does that leave us?

Dayle Hall:

So if you looked back, as we go through this period of time, because as a CIO, you’re tasked with looking at multiple areas of technology, multiple things that you could do or should do or you’ll get round to doing. If you look back and said that this is the one thing during this situation with COVID and the hybrid environment enabling that, what would you say was the biggest game changer for you at Year Up? You mentioned, I know nonprofit is slightly different to a corporate America, but like you said, that this is the thing that really enabled us to scale and grow. What would be the one thing, if everyone’s listening to this, the silver bullet, the gold nugget?

Gary Flowers:

I wish I had a tech golden nugget, right? Because one thing, Dayle, I would tell you technology change, right. So we go back to that word that’s overused, but it does, right? There’s always a new technology that can do something quicker, faster or do it differently. The nugget that I think that came out of COVID was what I alluded to earlier, was that it’s not a tech thing, it’s a business thing. Right? And nonprofit, it’s not a tech thing, it’s how can we better fulfill our mission? And the for-profit, it’s not a tech thing. How can we better serve our customers? Although tech has always been involved with all the other departments, it was typically, Hey, tech, we want to do this thing, can you help us? Versus now looking at tech and saying, Hey, we want your ideas to push the business to help us be better. That’s the shift. I mean, that is the shift that really in a lot of, let’s say, smart organizations, that’s the shift that occurred. I love to say all organizations felt that and took advantage of that, but that just wouldn’t be true.

But for the ones that did and for the ones that not only, from a business did that, but had the right technology, leadership, tech investment or opened up the wallet to make the tech investment during this time, that’s the inkling, I would tell you. And I’m part of a couple of associations from a senior level for technology, one that I’m very proud of, itSMF. That’s not just my opinion, as I talk to my peers, right? That’s a lot of the things that they say is there’s more pressure. But from a technology standpoint, we welcome that pressure as long as the business is seeing the value in cooperating and not just saying, go do this, but in true partnership with technology. That’s really the thing that I would tell you was the aha moment for me as we went through COVID.

Dayle Hall:

First of all, it’s very insightful. It’s definitely something that we are seeing, which is maybe COVID helped to accelerate it, but we see less customers or prospects coming to us and saying, You know we have this big digital transformation project. Tell us what you could do. It’s more like, we’re trying to solve these business issues, these business challenges, the business processes. They’re very focused now on outcomes. And I think nonprofit or corporate entity, I think that’s changed people’s thinking where it’s not- no one engages you to do these massive projects anymore. That never end. There’s so many stats I’ve seen around, why digital transformation projects fail, because it’s so nebulous. You could be going on forever, but show me the business processes, the business use cases we’re trying to solve. And then I think you get a better outcome from those. I’m sure you see it too.

Gary Flowers:

You use a term that I definitely love to just spend a second to dig down on, whether your profit or nonprofit, it’s about outcomes. Now, the definition of outcomes may be different, right, for nonprofits versus for-profit. But if you are an IT leader and you want to be successful, I would tell you exactly that. Don’t focus on the tech, focus on the outcomes. And don’t focus on the outcomes at the end, focus on the outcomes at the beginning. Talk to your business partners and say, Hey, I’m not just your technologist, I’m your partner. So help me understand what you’re trying to accomplish and help me understand what the outcomes are at the end so I can build you something to where you can measure those outcomes.

So to your point, Dayle, it’s not this continuous, we’re eventually going to get there. It’s a- and this is where the agile mindset comes in, right? I’m starting from the beginning with those outcomes in mind. So you may have 15 outcomes, and it takes us a long time to get to 15. But what if in the first quarter or the first six months, I can get you to where you can measure the first five. Then you’re coming back to me and saying, Okay, what about those other 10? How soon can I get to that? What do you need, Gary? Because the impact on the business on you allowing us to improve and then measure those five outcomes is X. And I want to get to Y and Z. That outcome pieces very much resonates with me. And that’s the difference between different levels of IT leaders, different maturity levels of IT leaders is can you be a business partner? But then of course, bring that technology slant to how technology and data can help support those outcomes.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. I mean, we could finish the podcast here and the two things you said. It’s not a tech thing, it’s a business thing. And outcomes come first before the project starts. But it’s surprising. You hear it, and it’s like, of course, that’s how you should be thinking. But how many times do leaders go into these projects and don’t start with that? It’s interesting. I have a question for you. You mentioned something up front, that it’s a three-year roadmap for technology. You’ve been going for 21 years, did you say, but it’s-

Gary Flowers:

21 years. Yes.

Dayle Hall:

But this is a foundation year, that’s what you said. I’d like to know a little bit more about that because obviously when you hear foundation, you think you’re starting from scratch. But you’ve around for a while. So how does a tech roadmap start with a foundation year when you’ve probably already got a bunch of tech? How does that work?

Gary Flowers:

Yeah. So I would love to say that my executive team said, Yes, Gary, just stop everything and firm up of the foundation. You have to do no innovation. But that wouldn’t be the case, right? It ebbs and flows. But for year one, we did say, listen, there are foundational things that we must do this year to correct, as they say, the sins of the past. There’s things like technical debt that we’ve ignored for 5 to 10 years that we must correct, or we cannot do some of this innovation in year two and transformation in year three to land that roadmap to where the organization can accelerate the number of young adults that we serve.

And so that’s where the foundation piece comes in. There’s some big rocks. There’s a lot of low hanging fruit. The thing that I double down on for year one is, okay, we’re not going to take a step back to your point, Dayle. We’re not starting from scratch, but are firming up the foundation, right? So there’s concrete laid, there’s potholes. We have to fill in those potholes to make sure that my car’s axle isn’t tore off as we try to accelerate through all of these things and help the organization. Again, it is a balance, but I specifically, Dayle, call out foundation.

I wanted the organization to understand, again, we can’t build on quick sand. I also come in as a new leader in this technology organization. I wanted to make sure that my technology organization, my technology team knew that I heard them when I came in. And said, Listen, Gary, this is all great stuff, but this is my day-to-day reality. And if we could fix some of that, I could give you what you’re asking for and more. But if not, if we don’t fix some of these things, I don’t really see a path how we can support the organization in these things. So that’s where that foundation piece comes in, Dayle.

Dayle Hall:

And given your experience of management consulting, corporate enterprises, now to nonprofit, when you’re building that type of roadmap, and you’re looking at the types of technologies, even if you are focused on outcomes, what are the differences between, here’s what we have to consider for a nonprofit versus if you’re in a corporate entity where it could be outcomes based, but it’s still a very different environment?

Gary Flowers:

On the corporate side, there’s differences between public companies and non-public companies, the size of the company. If you are private equity backed versus privately held. And so what I would tell you is in a lot of those situations, you have pressure for growth immediately. So if I’m a public company, like Wall Street is looking at you on a daily, monthly, quarterly basis, from a nonprofit standpoint, it ultimately, again, is about the mission. I’m not saying in the nonprofit world you have this endless road that you can use, but you should be thinking more on what’s best for the young adults or the people that we serve.

And so that gives you a little bit more leeway to “do the right thing.” I do not want to say that you don’t have the same pressure. Because again, we have 800 to 900 employees in our organization. So a big part of what we are doing from a technology standpoint is helping their lives be easier so they can focus more on their core competencies as opposed to things that we can automate, as opposed to things that we can just serve up to individuals. To me, the biggest key there between the two is the pressures of day-to-day versus the focus on what are we doing to further that impact. And especially, Dayle, to the point of, hey, we’ve been doing this for 20 years.

So we’re focused, quite frankly, a lot on things like this which is marketing technology, helping organizations understand we’re serving young adults and we’re modeling some of the behavior that we’re trying to train these young adults in, which is being data decision makers, which is we teach our young adults to have a plan for your career. You got a plan for things that are going to happen three to five years from now, not just what you’re going to do at work tomorrow. So again, I’m not sure if that does, but hopefully that answers your question.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. No, it does. You have a bunch of initiatives. You automated an enterprise portal. You have this corporate matching initiative, you centralized student enrollment. Talk to me a little bit about one of those areas. What were the role blocks you have? How did you get through it? I love your comments around outcomes, but obviously, there is some things that technology solves. Talk me through one of those and how you were able to really help scale the business or get more benefit from it.

Gary Flowers:

Yeah. Well, I’ll give you a fourth one, Dayle, to illustrate this point. We revamped our website in the middle of all this. Although, Year Up has been around, we were still kind of the best kept secret in a lot of areas. And when you went to our website, it quite frankly just didn’t do us justice. We got marketing, we got technology, we got communications. We got a bunch of different departments together to say, we know what the problem is. And then one of the things that we did, Dayle, was we actually did some research. We assumed it was X, Y, and Z was the problems with our website. But then we went out and we used research firms, and we interviewed people that had never been to our website. And we said, Hey, how long does it take you to be on our website before you understand what Year Up is? And some of them said, I gave up.

Dayle Hall:

I’ve heard that before.

Gary Flowers:

Right. Right. Or what impression did you gate? And at certain points, the impression was, is this too good to be true? And so we took a look at some of those things. And then we put a team together from designing wire frames and testing things in the marketing worlds, doing A/B testing and having people go down one path and measuring that against other things. And I would tell you now, we’re at the point where we want someone within seconds, if not minutes, to understand exactly what Year Up is. Not just understanding, but have enough information to make an intelligent decision on whether or not you’re going to apply or whether or not it’s a grandmother that’s going to take it back to her grandson and say, Hey, you should take a look at this. Or whether, Dayle, it’s organizations that want to partner with us, because we also understand that Year Up alone can’t solve this and can’t produce enough talent.

So we’re also looking to partner with other talent providers to get that talent into our program when the ultimate goal is not just training them, but getting them into those life-changing positions/careers. That’s an example of where the technology piece of it, I won’t say it was easy, but putting the website together and getting the content management system and testing it and those things, there were some iterations of that. But again, at the beginning, it was, as we said before, what are we trying to solve? And how do we prove that what we feel we’re solving is actually going to solve what the core issues are. So even though we knew, we said, here are the outcomes. Ultimately, there were different outcomes that we actually solve for because we did that research in the beginning.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. Do you find internally, as you look at, the website is one example, your enrollment, the portals that you have, do you find that more and more groups internally are coming together to help make these decisions and kind of build those things out?

Gary Flowers:

One difference in nonprofit and for-profit, Dayle, is definitely resources. Whether those resources are people or whether those resources are dollars. So in the nonprofit world, you have limited dollars. And so you want to make sure your dollars are being used to tackle what I call cross-functional insights. We have a project initiation process for IT now. And I always tell people, I was like, listen, if your project crosses two or three different functions, you have a higher likelihood of getting resources assigned to that or getting it started sooner. Now, we still have initiatives that are focused on one area, right?

But again, the answer to your core question is absolutely yes. And today’s times is more about how can we do things better together than how can my department do it. Now, my department, there are very few things. I’m in account. Finance closes to books. God, thank you for them, right, because I couldn’t do that. But there are more examples of how finance is working with HR and HR and IT, and our three departments need to solve this problem. There’s more of those than there are, this is just an issue for this department. And so from a technology standpoint, that’s why it’s really important to build those relationships because it’s very easy for departments, even from a tech standpoint, right, to get bogged down in just their silos.

And so as technology builds those relationships across the organization and they’re having those conversations, one of the big initiatives in our roadmap is to put together an enterprise data layer that is focused on cross-functional data insights and have conversations with DEIB and HR, and say, Well, DEI, what if you knew this HR information, what could you do with that? And just watch their eyes bubble, right, and get excited because they never thought about that, because they were really just focused on their lane. The more you do that, the more that also builds trust between departments. Because the three departments, the end result may affect the one department more than the others, but that trust is built. And the next initiative, that department that you helped out is going to help you with yours even more, right? It builds that muscle across departments. And technology is kind of the hub in the wheel, right? We have a ton of spokes, but technology is the one that typically talks to everyone.

Dayle Hall:

That’s a very enlightening point, Gary, which I think is key. When people talk about, we want data insights, we want to see what’s happening in our business, no one really goes forward and says, because when you share those, you build trust across the organization. I don’t hear that a lot. And I think that is one of the key things that I’ll take from this as well is yes, we want data. Yes, we want to develop insights so we can improve our processes. We can provide a better customer experience. But imagine, the trust that gets built then when everyone’s looking at the same data, no one’s in their own data silos. It’s almost, it breaks that silo down. And like I said, there’s a level of trust there that probably just doesn’t happen otherwise.

So that’s a very good insight. I know we’re going to wrap up here shortly. So just the last, I have two more questions. What advice would you give to other nonprofits that are looking at some of the types of things that you’ve done around automation and going hybrid model? What are the things that you would advise them to kind of think about as they get started?

Gary Flowers:

One of the things I would advise and I’ve made sure in coming to Year Up, that I’m more involved in, and that’s the philanthropy side. So a lot- most nonprofits we’re 60/40, 40/60 between philanthropy and dollars that we’d get from our corporate partners. But there are a lot of nonprofits that are 80/20, 90/10. What I would tell you is from a tech standpoint is, make sure that your philanthropy partners understand the role tech is playing. In today’s time, there are a lot of foundations out there that are interested in investing organizations, and they love your mission, but they’re interested in investing into the technology enablement side.

And so that’s something that a lot of organizations kind of missed a mark on when it comes from a nonprofit standpoint, especially in today’s time. You have a lot of tech billionaires out there that on today’s time are interested in sharing some of their proceeds with nonprofits from a legacy standpoint and a given back standpoint, as we talked about before. And so having your heads of tech be involved in the business strategy and being able to have those heads of tech have business conversations with your philanthropy partners to translate between what tech is doing and how that’s affecting your outcomes and enabling your outcomes is something that I want to encourage all nonprofits to do.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. It’s a really good insight. Okay. Last question for you. There’s a lot of artificial intelligence talk and machine learning, and a lot of other things we talk about in the industry. What are you really looking forward to from a tech side? What do you think is going to be something that if you can harness the power of it, or put it in your own organization, what is the thing that you think will elevate the business, accelerate growth, provide more capabilities to students or whatever. What are you really excited about?

Gary Flowers:

So the part that I’m excited about, we have our roadmap, but if I had to pin it down on at the end of that, what’s the one thing I want our organization to walk and run away with, would be the- I wouldn’t necessarily say AI and machine language and all that, because those things are as good as the programming that you put into them. Right? And so that cross-functional data insight piece, it’s a muscle. Right? Just like any other muscle, you have to exercise it. And so getting to the point where your organization is making, not just data-driven decisions, but proactive data-driven decisions. Not just saying, hey, well, I see this. But saying, hey, based off of our past, here’s some assumptions on our future. And either that’s a good thing and we should double down on it. Or based on our past, I’m identifying some things that could be a problem, let’s pivot before it becomes a problem.

And the reason that I double down on that, Dayle, is because all of these other things have to be in place for that to occur. I can’t do proactive decision-making if I have 20 offices and they’re doing things 20 different ways. If I streamline my processes, if I talk to my business partners and understand what their issues are and what they’re looking to do, I combine those, I get them into one data storage area where I can sit there and either manually with data scientists or from an AI or machine language or those things, come up with some of those predictors, that’s really where the win-win is. Because now when, I walk in the morning and I’m over a department over a function, I want the first thing that you do. No one, Dayle, no one wakes up and says, I can’t wait to log into that system.

Dayle Hall:

Well, I certainly don’t.

Gary Flowers:

Right. No business person does that.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah.

Gary Flowers:

What they do do, Dayle, is they wake up in the morning, they sit down and they say, How am I going to manage my day? What am I going to focus on? And I want to be able to serve them up the information that helps them plan their day, their week, their quarter. And that’s where that data piece comes in.

Dayle Hall:

That’s great. I think that’s a great way to end, Gary. I’ll give you the last 20 seconds to give you a quick plug for Year Up, for anyone out there listening, how they can be involved. I hope SnapLogic will also get involved with you post this podcast, but give us your 20-second pitch to close us out.

Gary Flowers:

Yeah. I would tell you two different sides, and yearup.org is the website you would go to. And so I would tell you if you’re a young adult, you’re between the ages of 18, and I think we’re going up to between 26 and 29 now. And you want a different path, you haven’t figured it out yet, take a look at our website. And then from a corporation standpoint, same thing, take a look at our website, understand what we do and contact someone if it’s something that you think would benefit your organization. So Dayle, I thank you. I absolutely thank you for this time. This has been great. Appreciate it. And maybe we can do it again in the future sometime.

Dayle Hall:

I would love that, Gary. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you to everyone for listening to this podcast, and we’ll see you on the next one.