A huge network. No way to actually use it.
National social impact organization · Office of the Founder · media, advocacy, capital deployment
The client
A national organization at the intersection of media, advocacy, and capital.
A small team in the Office of the Founder manages a vast network of partners, advisors, funders, and collaborators — from documentary production to grant-making.
The challenge
Relationship management capped the work.
The network kept growing and the team kept rebuilding the same context by hand for every event and every ask.
- Fragmented contact management across spreadsheets and tools, with no complete view of the network
- Labor-intensive event prep — scrambling to compile guest lists and briefing materials
- No way to track relationship reciprocity: who they’d asked versus who they’d supported
- Missed opportunities from no visibility into who knew whom
- Relationship management consuming so much time it capped new initiatives
In their words: “We had a huge network but no way to actually use it strategically — constantly reinventing the wheel for every event.”
The solution
A VIP relationship system that compounds.
A custom Airtable system built to grow organically and get more valuable over time without heavy maintenance. Four interconnected tables capture the full context.
People
Contacts, relationship history, and the interaction insights that make the next conversation easier.
Organizations
The entities those contacts represent, so affiliation is a fact rather than a memory.
Initiatives
Projects and events treated as connection points, not one-off logistics.
Links
The relationships between people and initiatives, tracking asks made and support given.
The results
What changed.
- A single, complete view of the network for the first time
- Event preparation systematized instead of reinvented each time
- Relationship reciprocity tracked, so the team could see who to call and why
- Staff time returned to strategic work instead of manual coordination
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Related work.
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