Caring in Common: A Customer Spotlight on Shona Koehn

How long have you been working for your organization?

I have been working with United Way of St. Joseph County for just under three years.

What’s a typical day in your role like?

As an Andar super-user for our resource development team, my days are primarily spent cleaning and standardizing records, setting up dashboards, and running LOTS of reports.

Can you tell us about a project you’re most proud of?

I recently set up a nightly report to alert the RD team about leadership donations received the previous day. It took a combination of SQL queries, an extract table, and an extract report to get all the desired information into the report. I learned a LOT about data mining in the process. When combined with Andar/360’s pledge alerts, it keeps the whole team up-to-date and able to quickly connect with donors individually.

Above: Shona sporting her Live United shirt while working from home.

What motivates you to come to work every day?

The work that I do supports the rest of the staff at my United Way. It’s crucial for my colleagues to have clean data and meaningful reports to do their work, and it’s important to me that I’m here to help them out!

What’s your favorite aspect of your job?

I am a data geek, so I love being able to put those skills to use as part of a really great team.

What are your biggest professional challenges?

Like so many in the nonprofit community, I struggle with the implementation of big ideas because of the time or monetary resources required to bring them to fruition.

If you could choose anyone, who would you pick as your mentor? Can you tell us why?

It’s actually three people. I would choose the band Hanson as my mentors. (Yes, THAT Hanson.) In addition to being a huge fan of their music, they are entrepreneurs and excel at engaging with their fans to keep them coming back. I think that a lot of what they do could be applied toward keeping donors engaged.

What is your personal mantra?

It's not really a mantra, but it sums me up pretty well. It's a quote by David Allen, "Being organized simply means that where something is matches what it means to you."

Above: Meet Shona's two adorable bunnies. They're both named after Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters. The brown one is named Dawn Summers and the black one is named Mr. Anya.

Do you have hobbies outside of work? What are they?

Outside of work, I mostly like to spend time with my family and my two pet rabbits. My husband and I like to watch hockey and go to shows and concerts (when we aren’t in a pandemic, of course!) I also really enjoy organizing, designing, and making things for my house.

Caring in Common is a spotlight series that showcases different nonprofit professionals on the last Friday of each month. The goal is to highlight Andar Software customers from all walks of life, levels of experience, and areas of expertise. Their answers will inspire you, give you insight about the nonprofit industry, and motivate you on both a professional and personal level.