How is Jada doing?
That’s the question. Not “what’s Jada’s GPA?” or “did Jada fill out her survey?” The whole picture. Is she thriving? Is something off?
Is her coach relationship strong, or is there a gap we’re not seeing?
For years, answering that question meant jumping into multiple spreadsheets, pulling transcript data from one system, survey results from another, and getting on a call with a coach to ask how things felt.
We were already doing the work. Touching base with every student. But there was no single place to go and see it. No way to check in at a glance.
We always knew this is where we needed to get to.
The foundation we didn’t build alone.
When we first adopted Salesforce, we needed help. Real help.
Salesforce is free for nonprofits. That’s one of the best kept secrets in the sector. But free software and a functional CRM are two very different things. Setting it up in a way that actually maps to how your organization works - that takes expertise.
Paul Delaney, president of AMEND Consulting and a Level Up board member, was quick to offer their team’s services. AMEND is a Cincinnati-based consulting firm specializing in business operations, enterprise technology, financial planning, and M&A integration. They also happen to be on the forefront of AI adoption for businesses in the region.
As a corporate partner, AMEND didn’t just write us a check. They rolled up their sleeves.
They worked closely with us to understand our workflow and then built the structure. A coach recruitment pipeline. Integration with Givebutter, our donation platform. Grant tracking. Sales funnel pipelines for corporate partners, and donors.
That work was essential. Most nonprofits don’t have an AMEND in their corner or a consultancy willing to give that kind of time and expertise. We were fortunate. I don’t take that for granted.
The bones AMEND built are still the backbone of our operations. We still reach out to them when we need an answer or a quick hand. That kind of ongoing partnership is invaluable.
Here’s what changed.
The landscape shifted. Fast.
Three years ago, I couldn’t have done what AMEND did. I didn’t have the Salesforce knowledge, and the tools didn’t exist to bridge that gap.
Today they do.
In the last three months, AI has gotten to the point where I can work directly inside Salesforce, creating custom objects, building fields, designing dashboards, and deploying code. Not by following tutorials. Not by learning Apex from scratch. By describing what I need and having AI handle the engineering.
Updates that required a specialist three years ago, the tools can now handle. That changes the equation for every nonprofit, especially the ones who don’t have an AMEND on their side.
That shift happened faster than I expected. And it’s still accelerating.
Four days. Zero lines of code I wrote.
We wanted dashboards. Not just data in fields, but visual indicators that told a story at a glance.
Here’s what we built using Claude Code as an AI development partner:
A Scholar Dashboard on each student’s contact record: relationship health, GPA trends, satisfaction ratings, coach pairings, employment status, and milestones
A board-ready Student Health Dashboard showing program-wide retention, GPA, employment, graduation, satisfaction, and scholarship totals
A data pipeline connecting Google Forms to Salesforce through Zapier. When a coach or scholar fills out a semester check-in survey, the data flows automatically into the right fields. No manual entry.
8 custom components, 118 commits. I didn’t write the code. I described what we needed, made the architecture decisions, and reviewed the results. AI wrote the Apex controllers, the Lightning Web Components, the test coverage - all of it.
The insight that made it worth it.
This is the part that made the whole project click.
Our semester surveys ask both coaches and scholars to rate their relationship on a scale.
It’s a five-stage framework: Initiating, Experimenting, Intensifying, Integrating, Bonding. Both sides rate independently.
Now imagine a coach rates their relationship as “Intensifying.” They feel good. Things are moving.
The scholar rates it as “Initiating.” They’re still figuring things out.
That gap used to be invisible. We might catch it eventually through a conversation, or we might not. Now it’s on a dashboard. We can see it the moment the surveys come in. And we can talk to the coach about it before it becomes a retention problem.
We didn’t build a better CRM. We built a window into how every scholar is actually doing. The data was always there, scattered across surveys and calls and gut feelings. Now it’s organized, visible, and actionable before anyone has to ask.
Where AI hit the wall.
It wasn’t seamless. Salesforce wasn’t built for AI to navigate.
The admin interface buries its buttons and fields behind layers of protection. Normal automation can’t reach them. We had to write custom workarounds just to break through.
A couple of examples:
Salesforce flat-out refused to let the AI create a new field. “Insufficient Privileges.” I did that one myself.
The same type of button had different code behind it depending on the page. No consistency. No pattern to follow.
None of it was a dealbreaker. But it’s worth naming because this is how AI development actually works right now.
You’re the architect. AI is the builder.
When the builder hits something it can’t solve, you don’t scrap the project. You grab a wrench and keep going.
Everything we built in four days sits on top of the foundation AMEND put in place.
The AI didn’t replace the expert work. It made it compound.
Every organization has a gap between the tools they pay for and the way they wish they actually worked. Closing it used to require a specialist.
Today it requires a question: what do I wish this thing did? Whatever your answer, the tools to build it are within reach.
How is Jada doing?
At a quick glance, I can tell you:
Jada is working part-time while pursuing her master’s degree in nursing. She and her coach Becca list their relationship in the Intensifying phase - they’re building something real.
Five stars across the board for Level Up support metrics. She’s crushing it at school; GPA continues to trend well.
Her dreams are ahead of her. And we’ll be watching, ready to step in if she ever needs us.
That’s what this platform was built for.
Not dashboards. Not data.
Jada.
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This is part four of The $0 Department: What Happens When a Nonprofit Stops Hiring and Starts Building. Subscribe to follow the full series.
Level Up Cincinnati empowers first-generation college students through mentorship, scholarships, and professional development. 100% of donations go directly to student programming. Learn more at https://levelupcincinnati.org