We checked in with Digi-Bridge one year after their 2023 G.A.I.N. powered by Lowe’s Application Selection CIP to see the impact AfterSchool21 made on their nonprofit. Sarah Friday met with Kaylee Plaza from Digi-Bridge.
G.A.I.N. – Powered by Lowe’s
Kaylee shared when she began working with Digi-Bridge everything was being tracked with Google Sheets. With four distinct curricula and five sessions per series, 20 sessions in total, Digi-Bridge needed a reliable way to monitor attendance and participation across over 30 local school sites. Thanks to SEI’s support, TransAct’s Afterschool 21 now enables precise tracking across all sessions.
This has unlocked invaluable insights into:
- Student Enrollment and Attendance Patterns: Who is enrolling, attending, and who is returning?
- Retention Rates: Are students returning and if not, why? Provides objective, data driven narrative to inform curriculum development and program innovation.
- Helps build narrative and assist them in making programmatic changes to raise the impact, e.g. added two series in the fall instead of programming later into spring to allow students to attend both STEAMLab and spring sports without conflict.
- Inform engagement, for example, if a group had 24 students on session 1 then only 10 on session 2, why was this?
- Grade-Level Trends: What ages are most engaged and does the curriculum need their learning needs?
This empowers the nonprofit with better decision-making tools and helps fulfill critical grant reporting requirements.
One of the most immediate benefits has been the massive time savings. What used to take more than 4 hours per week now takes just 2. That adds up to over 180 hours saved annually. Program Director Kaylee, and her team of program managers, can now devote more energy to being in classrooms, supporting teachers and most importantly, boosting student experience and impact.
Kaylee has even been giving her feedback to the AfterSchool21 team at TransAct on how to make the tool better for programs like STEAMLab. “The tool was designed for a school district, not a program like ours,” Kaylee explained. “So, we’ve had to do some work arounds to make it fit our needs.” Finding each school’s attendance was cumbersome. The TransAct developers listened to this feedback and came up with a way for Digi-Bridge to clearly track both of their STEAMLab and Robotics programs without merging this data into one. Soft launched in July, TransAct has released a new, updated system and Kaylee hopes this will make checking the attendance for each school even more seamless. Teachers who lead the school-based programs also benefit from easier access to student data, making follow-ups, and communication with families much more efficient.
Parents are more connected than ever, thanks to AfterSchool21’s mobile-friendly registration form.
This has elevated the organization’s branding and streamlined family engagement. New features like SMS messaging are being launched this year, helping Digi-Bridge keep families informed with real-time updates and reminders.
The rich data provided by TransAct’s AfterSchool21 software has allowed deeper and more accurate analysis on attendance and engagement data. This has helped identify which curriculums resonate most with students, paving the way for targeted curriculum improvements and even greater impact.
With the help of Apparo and SEI volunteers, Digi-Bridge has turned data into a dynamic driver of student success.
From smarter tracking and goal setting to stronger communication and insight, this collaboration is a model for how data-driven technology tools and nonprofit missions can align to create meaningful change.
Read about the original project here…
