We love working with the staff at homeownership programs across the country, because they’re leveraging HomeKeeper to save time, raise their profile and collaborate across organizations. We’re constantly impressed to see how with a little investment, groups using HomeKeeper are taking their program management light years into the future. Here are the reasons so many say: “I love HomeKeeper!”:
1. Funders Take Notice When You Focus on Efficiency and Impact Measurement
HomeKeeper helps improve impact measurement for our members with some of the largest programs in the country like the Champlain Housing Trust, Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco and the City of Cambridge. It also enables small programs to show that they’re serious contenders for funding because they have a system to manage their buyers and applicants. Funders are thrilled to see organizations looking to increase staff time on services, and decrease time spent on administration. They are even more impressed by organizations tracking program outcomes, as well as where their money was spent. Our team is here to support you every step of the way to get the reports you need out of HomeKeeper and into the hands of the funders and constituents who are most important to you.
“I can easily extract information from HomeKeeper for grant requests. And I brag about the measurement. This was from a letter of inquiry I prepared last week: ‘NHI tracks data on applicants and purchasers in the HomeKeeper Database. Data from NHI rolls up to a national database for community land trusts and measures our social impact on the community locally and as it compares to national results.’”
-Ann Borne, Northshore Housing Initiative
2. Finally – Persuasive and Accurate Data at your fingertips
HomeKeeper lets you evaluate your outcomes on real data, not a small anecdotal sample. With all of their data on funding, properties and clients in Salesforce, with a click of a button, organizations can query their data for answers. Staff can pivot their programs based on data in real time. When the board, a funder or a local municipality inquiries require, we see HomeKeeper users easily running a report, without blinking an eye.
Figuring out the age of homeowners at purchase is no longer a tricky question. Counting the number of bedrooms, or a particular subset of buyers no longer takes huge amounts of staff time. What before took half and hour takes 60 seconds.
In addition, HomeKeeper members are showing their local communities how they stack up on a national level. HomeKeeper Members can receive a Social Impact Report that benchmarks their programs on the depth of affordability, demographic reach and efficient use of subsidies. The Social Impact Report allows you to demonstrate the importance of your program in your local community, and how you compare nationally so that you can show off the your strength.
“HomeKeeper has changed my daily work tremendously. It’s revolutionized the way that we track data. It’s revolutionized the, the sincerity with which I can interact with clients and keep track of their life changes.”
-Garbo Grossman, Homestead Community Land Trust
3. Organizational Memory Can Outlive Staff Transitions
Because HomeKeeper was built by program managers, our members have a consistent data structure across organizations and across time. Our users have a cohesive system of data, and because of HomeKeeper, a staff transition simply requires getting a log in to Salesforce, getting a HomeKeeper refresher, and learning your organization’s specific procedures are reflected in Salesforce. A staff transition no longer no means left interpreting a spreadsheet or rifling through manilla folders in the event of an audit. Instead, staff can tap into historical data, because it’s in HomeKeeper, and see the running history of an applicant, homeowner or former homeowner’s relationship with your organization.
“Before, the process was, ‘Who has been here the longest and with the the best memory? What do you think? Can we corroborate?’ Now it’s just an easy report to run. That’s the real value with HomeKeeper.”
-Ali Sheibani, Habitat for Humanity Seattle – King County
4. You’re Part of A Network of Support, Growing Across the Country
HomeKeeper isn’t just a database that happens to work for homeownership programs. HomeKeeper is a community. HomeKeeper members in the same state often coach each other and share ideas. We bring practitioners twice a month at online Q&A sessions, get inspired at user trainings (both web based and in person) and learn more at conferences. Our team is committed to helping you serve more families in ever improving programs, which is why we facilitate solution sharing–both programmatic and technological between HomeKeeper members. HomeKeeper can connect your staff to other practitioners with experience on the issues you face in your program.
“HomeKeeper brings together people from across the country in community webinars that lets me connect with and learn from other practitioners facing the same challenges. It’s been wonderful, because you can become a little isolated just working on a small team in a municipality. Now we have ready access to a much larger group of colleagues managing affordable housing programs. It’s been nice to compare notes and get different perspectives from others in this community.”
-Anna Dolmatch, Housing Planner, City of Cambridge, MA