The Neighbor Solutions Blog
Expert guidance, best practices, and thought leadership for nonprofit professionals. Real strategies from real experts helping real communities.
We Gave Our Outreach Workers Tablets. Here's What Happened.
Years ago, we handed iPads to our street team and told them to ditch the clipboards. I'm still processing what we learned.
Stop Making Dashboards Nobody Looks At
I've built dashboards that collected dust for three years. Here's what I finally figured out about making reports people actually use.
Why That Family Told Their Story Four Times Yesterday
Coordinated entry was supposed to fix this. So why are people still repeating themselves at every agency they visit?
How to Count People Who Don't Want to Be Found
Our annual Point-in-Time count is only as good as our methodology. Here's what we've learned about getting accurate data on unsheltered homelessness.
Actually Measuring What Matters in Homeless Services
We track a lot of things. But after years of outcomes measurement, I'm convinced most of it misses the point.
We Stopped Using Paper. It Was Harder Than We Expected.
A 40-bed shelter's journey from clipboards to tablets—including all the things that went wrong.
The Shelter Director Who Made Me Rethink Everything
A conversation over coffee changed how I think about trauma-informed care—and data collection.
Our Referral Network Was Broken. Here's How We Fixed It.
For years, referrals went into a black hole. Now we know what happens to 90% of them.
AI in Homeless Services: My Honest Take After a Year of Testing
We tried chatbots, predictive models, and automated triage. Some worked. Most didn't. Here's what I learned.
The Night We Almost Lost Our Data (And What We Did After)
A ransomware scare taught us everything we should have known about nonprofit data security.
I Asked 50 Volunteers What They Actually Want. The Answers Surprised Me.
We assumed volunteers wanted flexibility. Turns out they wanted something else entirely.
We Used Three Different Systems. Here's How We Finally Picked One.
Our team fought about CRMs for two years. Eventually we figured out the real problem wasn't the software.
Unsheltered Outreach: What I Learned in My First Year
Twelve months on a street outreach team taught me things I couldn't learn in any training.
The Grant That Changed How I Think About Reporting
We almost lost a renewal because we couldn't explain our own numbers.
Grant Writing That Doesn't Put Funders to Sleep
I've read hundreds of grant applications. Here's what makes me stop scrolling.
What the New HUD Reporting Rules Mean for Your Team
HUD is changing how Continuums of Care report data. Here's what actually matters for frontline workers.
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