Caring in Common Tag Archive

Get Featured in Caring in Common

Caring in Common showcases different nonprofit professionals on the last Friday of every month. The spotlight series aims to connect the Andar community on both a professional and personal basis. The goal is to highlight Andar Software customers from all walks of life, levels of experience, and areas of expertise. You can see all past spotlights in the Free Resources section of our website.

Would you like to be featured? It's a great opportunity to grow your professional brand, and just involves answering a few questions here and submitting a couple of photos to hilary.german@andarsoftware.com.

Caring in Common: A Customer Spotlight on Shane Albertin

 


 

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Shane Albertin
VP of IT and Facilities
United Way of the Greater Capital Region
Albany, NY, USA

 

 


 

How long have you been working for your organization?

19.5 years

What’s a typical day in your role like?

My day ranges from network administration, database administration to resource development and finance. Most days, I work with data and ensuring data integrity. However, I am also responsible for the building and our tenants.

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

This is a tough one. I have a couple that I am proud of. I guess the most recent is the creation of standard operating procedures and data lookup tables. These two projects ensure that all information in and out of the data took the same path. This helped keep the data integrity in place and shaved time off, in some cases days, of certain tasks.

Working with Andar, I also took a payout process that was taking our team weeks to accomplish and knocked it down to a day, two tops. This was run by finance, and saving the time off their schedules really offset our cost to do business, in hours spent working.

What motivates you to come to work every day?

I have to say there are a couple of items that motivate me to continue going to work after nearly 20 years. I love a challenge, and anyone who has worked in a United Way, especially a smaller one, understands that challenges pop up on an almost consistent basis. The challenges keep me from getting bored. Every week is a new set of tasks, and I love the feeling you get when you accomplish the work. Whether that is implanting processes that save time and effort or maintaining the systems.

One other thing is that I may not see it, but every night when I leave the office, I know that my time today helped someone. My work in my office with no windows, helped put a meal on a table or provided a roof over someone’s head that would have spent the night on the street.  

What’s your favorite aspect of your job?

As I mentioned above, the best parts are the challenges. That and knowing my work, no matter how frustrating a day, week or more may have been, provided help to someone in need. That is an amazing feeling, helping another.

What are your biggest professional challenges?

Time is one of the biggest challenges I face on a regular basis. I am a one-person department, and because I have the history, I am involved in many tasks, teams, departments workload. I have a network of 20ish employees with on-site hardware that requires administration. This goes for the database as well, as the sole employee with the ability to support both puts a lot of pressure on you and can take you away from your own tasks.

I struggle to take time off because I do not want to leave my team with no support. I throw away vacation time every single year and when I take a vacation, I end up working remotely in some capacity, texts, emails or even calls.

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

This one stopped me. This is difficult to pick someone, as I have so many interests.

On the technical side of things, I would have to choose one of my IT vendors who help support me. I have a relationship with a gentleman by the name of Eric who has helped me in the last 13 or so years. He is an extremely intelligent human being, and his knowledge of technology and his approach to customers are traits that I admire. As someone is a little quick-tempered, these types of traits are sought after.

What is your personal mantra?

Breathe. PMA (Positive Mental Attitude)

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

I am an avid gardener; I really love being in the garden.

I have a little creative side in me and have done T-shirts, screen printing, tie dyes and more. I have also taught myself to blow glass, lampworking, an escape for me from the stress and frustrations.

 

 


 

Carring in Common - Get to know other Andar fans who care about making #impact as much as you do.

 

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.

Get to Know Stephanie from Metro United Way

Meet Stephanie Burton, Director of Databases at Metro United Way. Stephanie loves taking a clunky, manual process, and finding ways to automate it and make it better.

Learn more about her in this month's Caring in Common customer spotlight.

See Spotlight

Caring in Common: A Customer Spotlight on Stephanie Burton

 


 

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Stephanie Burton
Director of Databases
Metro United Way 
Louisville, KY, USA

 


 

How long have you been working for your organization?

It will be nine years in November (11/1/2011 was my official start date!)

What’s a typical day in your role like?

One of the things that I love about my job is that there really isn’t a typical day for me. At any given time, I may be working on up to ten projects. They can run the gamut from tedious tasks like scrubbing data to energizing ones where I’m trying to find a solution that is innovative and maximizes efficiency.

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

The projects I am most proud of are the ones where I came up with a solution to a problem by repurposing tools we already had on hand. For example, I created my United Way’s help desk ticketing system, using Andar survey forms. Our staff can go to one site, and from there, submit tickets for training requests, hardware/software issues, room setup needs, and more. I also created an online portal for childcare centers that participate in our Excellence Academy program to track and share with us their center, teacher, and training data using Andar iAccess.

 

Stephanie-Burton-Pups

Above: Meet Stephanie's sweet pups, Izzy and Emma.

What motivates you to come to work every day?

Knowing that there is always something that we could be doing more efficiently is what motivates me to come to work. I really enjoy finding smarter ways to get the job done.

What’s your favorite aspect of your job?

I love taking a clunky, manual process, and finding ways to automate it and make it better. Being able to take a process that once took a lot of time or money to complete and dramatically decreasing the need for that resource expenditure is very gratifying.

What are your biggest professional challenges?

The biggest professional challenge I face is encountering reluctance to try something new. People get comfortable in the way they do things, and they aren’t always willing to stop, reassess, and redesign processes to optimize them. As someone who really enjoys maximizing process efficacy, I’d say that is my biggest professional challenge.

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

If I could choose anyone as a mentor, it would be Grace Hopper. She was an early pioneer in computer programming and posited that you could base a computer language on English words, which was not believed at the time. She was tenacious and curious, and I admire that in a person.

What is your personal mantra?

Quality is a probabilistic function of quantity.

Stephanie-Burton_County-Fair-Baking-Contest

Above: Stephanie winning 1st place at her county fair's bread baking contest.

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

Outside of work, I love baking bread! I’ve actually won 1st place in my county fair’s bread baking contest both times I entered.

 

 


 

Carring in Common - Get to know other Andar fans who care about making #impact as much as you do.

 

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.

Meet Shona Koehn, Data & Campaign Support Specialist

Shona is an Andar/360 super-user. As Data & Campaign Support Specialist, she spends her workdays cleaning and standardizing records, setting up dashboards, and running lots of reports.

Learn more about her responsibilities at United Way of St. Joseph County in this month's Caring in Common customer spotlight!

Read Spotlight

Caring in Common: A Customer Spotlight on Shona Koehn

 


 

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Shona Koehn
Data & Campaign Support Specialist
United Way of St. Joseph County 
South Bend, IN, USA

 


 

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.

Shona-Koehn-Selfie

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."

Shona-Koehn-Pet-Rabbits

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.

 

 


 

Carring in Common - Get to know other Andar fans who care about making #impact as much as you do.

 

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.

Caring in Common Spotlight on John Young

This month's Caring in Common customer spotlight features John Young. John is an IT and Database Manager. During campaign season, he manages all Andar e-Pledge sites and assists with pledge processing.

Learn more about him and his responsibilities at United Way of Eastern Maine!

Read Spotlight

Caring in Common: A Customer Spotlight on John Young

 


 

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John Young
IT and Database Manager
United Way of Eastern Maine 
Bangor, ME, USA

 


 

How long have you been working for your organization?

I started part-time in August of 2017. The position went full time in the Spring of 2018.

What’s a typical day in your role like?

There is no typical day in my position. My day could consist of running DMOs in Andar/360 and updating mailing lists, to IT support for a staff of ten members. During campaign season, I manage all e-Pledge sites and assist with pledge processing.

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

When I first started at United Way, we had four e-Pledge sites. We have now grown to over ten locations that use the online pledging module. Recently, I am also proud of getting all staff set up to work remotely in a matter of a couple of days!

What motivates you to come to work every day?

I have the opportunity to work with a hard-working, dedicated staff. Plus, I get to find new ways of automating our processes with the use of technology.

What’s your favorite aspect of your job?

Every day is different! I enjoy learning and implementing new technologies.

What are your biggest professional challenges?

My biggest professional challenge is time. There is not enough time in the week to accomplish what you need or want to do.

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

If I could choose a mentor, it would be John Glenn. He is inspiring for all he has done, and also because of how he was as a person.

John-Young_Sports-Hobbies

Above: John at a New England Patriots football game. They are his favourite team. He has been to a few games, but would love to see more. 

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

I enjoy watching football. I am currently learning to play golf, going to concerts, and being around friends and families.

 

 


 

Carring in Common - Get to know other Andar fans who care about making #impact as much as you do.

 

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.

Meet Merline Leonce from United Way of Miami-Dade

In this month's Caring in Common spotlight, become acquainted with #BossLady Merline Leonce. Merline makes a big impact as Director of IT at United Way of Miami-Dade. Her responsibilities not only include managing multiple technology projects, and helping staff with hardware and software issues; she also runs the summer internship technology program for high school minorities at her organization. Get to know her better in the latest customer spotlight!

Read Spotlight