Apparo’s Tech Therapy® assists Atlanta Children’s Day Shelter to streamline their intake process
Atlanta Children’s Day Shelter is a tuition-free early childhood education provider serving families experiencing homelessness or housing instability. Their mission is to break the cycle of poverty for families facing homelessness by building pathways to long-term self-sufficiency and providing quality early childhood education.
Apparo assisted Atlanta Children’s Day Shelter with Tech Therapy to optimize Salesforce to streamline their intake process.
Before the engagement, Atlanta Children’s Day Shelter relied heavily on paper intake packets and manual data entry. Salesforce was in place, but it functioned more like an address book than a reporting tool. Staff spent hours entering information across several systems, making it difficult to track families served, monitor progress month over month, or generate timely reports for funders. “Getting moment-in-time insights into our operations was really difficult,” said Kathryn Lea, Family Services Director of Atlanta Children’s Day Shelter.
Through Apparo’s Tech Therapy program, the organization worked with Apparo staff member Jennifer Ray and skilled corporate volunteer Jonathan Waites of JiLaSoan to identify the biggest pain points and most impactful solutions. Together, they focused on digitizing the screening process and ensuring data flowed directly into Salesforce. The team implemented digital screening forms that automatically create Salesforce profiles, eliminating duplicate entry and improving consistency across systems.
Even in the early stages, the impact was measurable:
- 5–6 staff hours saved per month through reduced manual data entry
- More accurate and accessible client data for reporting and follow-up
- Faster screening-to-enrollment for families
Building on this foundation, Atlanta Children’s Day Shelter plans to digitize its full enrollment packet, replacing lengthy paper forms with structured digital forms that flow directly into Salesforce. The organization estimates this could reduce onboarding time from about one month to two weeks, helping families access services faster and improving overall retention. “Apparo was a godsend,” Kathryn shared. “This put us on the path toward usable Salesforce data and long-term efficiency.”
To learn more about Apparo’s Tech Therapy program, visit this link.
