The problem
A Memphis nonprofit launched an emergency rental assistance program that grew from 5,000 applicants in early COVID to 100,000+ within two years. Their initial Google Sheets and manual processes couldn't scale to meet the rising community needs. Staff spent hours manually searching court records across county systems. Data entry errors cascaded through the program. Leadership lacked visibility into program performance.
What we did
- Migrated from Google Sheets to Airtable as primary case management system
- Built Python web scraping pipelines to automatically pull eviction records from court system
- Implemented Zapier automation to trigger SMS outreach and case prioritization based on court dates
- Created AWS Lambda functions to sync data with external CRMs without requiring server management
- Built Airtable-based dashboards showing application volume and case status
What changed
- Scaled to handle 100,000 applicants without proportional staff increases
- Eliminated manual court record lookups to save staff time
- Reduced case processing time from days to hours through automated prioritization
- Improved program visibility; leadership could see real-time spending and case outcomes
Built with
Airtable
Python web scraping
AWS Lambda
Zapier
Automated data pipelines