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Year End Donations Fund Running Water

Case STUDY

HubSpot and Inventory System Implementation

E2D

E2D receives donated laptops from corporations and individuals, then refurbishes and redistributes them to people in North Carolina who cannot afford their own devices.

The Challenge

United Way of Greater Cincinnati (UWGC) is dedicated to helping families flourish. Guided by community voices and data-driven strategies, UWGC unites diverse stakeholders comprised of individuals and organizations to address issues holistically.

Their approach is multifaceted, encompassing proactive interventions, advocacy, and investment across three key pillars: educational advancement, financial resilience, and housing stability.

For decades, workplace or employee giving brought in more than 90 percent of UWGC’s annual revenue. However, post-Covid years saw a steep decline in funding, exposing a need for diversified revenue streams and greater donation opportunities.

Additionally, UWGC was looking to strengthen its relationship with Workplace Corporate Partners (large business entities whose employees are the workplace donors), but was unsure where to begin.

Their challenges prompted them to connect with CauseMic, seeking answers to questions like:

  • How can we diversify our revenue streams?
  • How do we develop a more unified message that can be leveraged across our fundraising campaigns?
  • How can we inspire and build trust with our existing donor base to increase their investment through annual and monthly giving
  • How can we improve ties with our Workplace Corporate Partners?

Our Solution

To answer UWGC’s questions and address their challenges:

  • We analyzed UWGC’s existing donor base—specifically donation frequency, level of giving, and affiliation parameters—to identify fundraising audiences for annual and monthly giving outside of workplace donors.
  • We conducted interviews with numerous UWGC philanthropic partners to determine opportunity gaps and any friction hindering more fruitful engagement. We found a notable lack of understanding regarding the exact nature of UWGC’s work, highlighting a need to clearly convey their efforts. Information materials were required to effectively communicate UWGC campaigns to employees and others.
  • We worked with UWGC to clearly define their unique value proposition to help clarify and distinguish their work for current and prospective supporters. This centered on their holistic approach toward addressing financial, educational, and housing issues to help families within the Greater Cincinnati area thrive.
  • For a more cohesive donor experience, we developed a comprehensive content planner and strategy calendar across UWGC’s campaigns. Content themes were rooted in UWGC’s newly defined value proposition and addressed their three core pillars.
  • To expand fundraising beyond workplace giving, we determined opportunities for donors to give directly to UWGC by creating easy-to-understand appeals and plain-speak messaging.

The Results

  • United Way of Greater Cincinnati now had a clearly actionable plan to diversify their revenue streams for workplace giving and beyond, including new strategies to build out their annual and monthly giving programs.
  • Along with insights from CauseMic-conducted partner interviews, UWGC utilized our research and analysis to cultivate solid relationships with existing and future Workplace Corporate Partners.

The Challenge

In the digital age, access to computers and the internet is critical for students and their families to prosper. Eliminate the Digital Divide (E2D) collects and refurbishes laptops from corporations and individuals, redistributing them to student families in North Carolina who don’t have a computer at home.

ED2’s work depends on seamless coordination between device intake, servicing, and distribution — a workflow that had long outgrown the tools supporting it.

E2D was managing its entire device inventory through an aging, custom-built Google Web Application that had become increasingly unreliable. The system's infrastructure was fragile, the data was messy, and making any updates required custom development.

Worse, E2D's inventory system was completely siloed from their CRM, making it nearly impossible to report back to donors on the impact of their financial and in-kind gifts. On the recipient side, once a device left E2D's hands, there was no reliable way to follow up. If a laptop needed to be recalled or a new opportunity arose for a past recipient, the organization had no way to reach them.

These challenges prompted E2D to ask CauseMic four key questions:

  • How can we report back to donors what happened with their financial gifts or donated laptops?
  • How can we improve the distribution request process for clients with low tech capabilities, while capturing the data we need to improve our program reach?
  • How can we manage distributing multiple devices to a single family, sometimes without an email address on file?
  • How can we record both individual distributions and bulk distributions to our partner organizations?

Our Solutions

After a thorough discovery process, CauseMic implemented HubSpot Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and a custom inventory system tailored to E2D’s unique operating model. Here’s how we addressed each challenge.

Closing the Loop for Donors

We designed a custom data model in HubSpot that linked each Device record and Distribution event back to the original Gift record. Now, when E2D opens a donor’s profile in HubSpot, they can immediately see how many devices have been distributed, to whom, and where, creating a clear and compelling story of donor impact.

Smarter, More Accessible Intake Forms

Using HubSpot’s multi-step form capabilities, we built conditional logic into the distribution request process. This reduced the number of unnecessary questions recipients had to answer and made the language clearer and more accessible for clients with limited tech experience.

Flexible Lookup for Staff

We added the ability for distribution staff to look up individuals by either email address or phone number, streamlining the process of confirming a recipient’s information even without a full contact record.

Distinct Workflows for Every Distribution Type

Recognizing that E2D distributes individual devices and bulk distributions to partner organizations, we build separate HubSpot pipelines to manage each distribution pathway. We also enabled bulk device imports, aggregate distribution tracking, and dedicated workflows for coordinating organization-level distributions.

A smiling teenager holds up a new laptop
A mother and son posing for a photo

The Results

E2D now operates with an integrated, purpose-built platform that supports their operating model from the moment a device is donated to the moment it lands in a student’s hands.

Staff can now maintain lasting connections with their clients, sharing device and program updates as well as future opportunities. At the same time, E2D’s fundraising staff can close the loop with donors by sharing the journey of every device from gift to distribution.

Replacing the legacy Google Web Application with HubSpot has eliminated data quality issues and the ongoing need for custom development just to keep the lights on. Whether distributing a single laptop to a family or hundreds of devices to a partner organization, E2D’s team can now track, report on, and manage every distribution type within a single, streamlined system.

With processes that finally reflect how E2D works, staff are able to spend less time working around their tools and more time focused on getting devices to people who need them.

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