Meet the Team

Jordan Freitas, Kyle Williams-Smith, Hassam Farooq

We are honored to have been able to help The Woodmark Group help achieve its goal of cultivating the best fundraising practices among its members. The Woodmark Group sought the iSchool because of an information problem. Their resource sharing platform before the project was failing in many areas including ease of use, consistent engagement, searchability, and overall managability from the staff's perspective.

Meet the Staff

Marion Wodyvich, Rona Pryor, Marcie Paradis

The Woodmark Group is a not-for-profit organization whose members are prominent children’s hospitals in the United States and Canada. The hospitals created The Woodmark Group so that their development staff members could work collaboratively to lead the development of philanthropy to improve the health of children everywhere.

Project Overview

Design and Implementation

Current State Analysis

The project started by analyzing the current state of the Woodmark Exchange (WE) and enumerating specific pitfalls in the design and experience from a staff and user perspective. These issues were rated in terms of priority and formed the criteria for choosing a solution. The top five issues as identified from these preliminary meetings are below.
  1. Sub-optimal searchability
  2. Calendar Integration
  3. Master library/Library Management
  4. web traffic/Unreliable notification system
  5. Exporting Contacts/Profile Customization

Platform Research and Comparison

After researching and analyzing 6 intranet and social community providers, we chose Higher Logic over others based on: ease of use, platform maturity, configurability, and customer service. Below, we explain each of those reasons in more detail. The second page compares the functional requirements for the top three providers: Higher Logic, Slack, and Onsite.

Stakeholders

David is a Major Gifts Officer at Seattle Children’s Hospital. David’s job consists of fundraising activities designed to acquire new donors, renew and upgrade current donors, and provide budgetary support for ongoing programs. This process is also intended to build donor loyalty and identify major gifts prospects. In order to improve David’s workflow, the Woodmark Exchange allows him to connect with colleagues across Woodmark’s network to share best practices and collaborate on joint fundraising projects.


Rona is the Learning Strategy Coordinator at The Woodmark Group. Her daily workflow includes working with cohort chairs to facilitate discussion and cultivate best practices across all areas of fundraising. The Woodmark Exchange allows Rona to easily access the member directory, compile best practices, and schedule cohort calls.

Impact

Private investment in children’s health is critical to realizing the potential of modern medicine. Medical research and the pace of discovery are increasing rapidly. Progress in decoding complex genetic disorders is accelerating. The development of personalized medicine could lead to detection of disorders in early childhood, perhaps the prevention of such disorders and a lifetime free of destructive symptoms and debilitating disease. Donor support makes the difference in turning promise into reality. That is why private philanthropy is more important than ever to ensuring every child has the opportunity to have a healthy start in life.