Community Investment
Appalachia Advances
Every month we automate one business process for a small organization in our region, free. You bring the work that is eating your week. We build the thing that ends it.
The work is the donation.
Most small organizations around here are not short on dedication. They are short on hours. Somebody is retyping the same information into three systems, rebuilding the same report every Monday, or answering the same question by hand forty times a week. That work is invisible, and it quietly eats the capacity that was supposed to go toward the mission.
Business process automation is one of the things we do, and it is one of the ways we give back. We write checks too. But we can also hand an organization the thing we are genuinely good at, and that tends to be worth more than the check. One organization a month, one process, built properly and handed over working.
We do not take equity, we do not ask for a contract afterward, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it. If you want to hire us later, that is your call and not the point.
What you get, and what we ask
One workflow
We pick a single process and automate it end to end. Not a strategy deck, not a list of recommendations, but something that runs when we leave.
About twenty hours
Roughly twenty hours of our time, delivered inside the month. That is a real constraint, and it is why we can do this every month instead of once.
Here, not anywhere
Nonprofits, churches, and small businesses in the Appalachian Highlands: Northeast Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and Northwest North Carolina. This is about the place we live.
We write about it
You let us tell the story: what we built and what it changed. You see anything that names you before it goes out. That is the only thing we ask back.
How it works
- 1
Apply
Tell us what work is eating your week. Applications stay open, so there is no deadline to miss.
- 2
We choose one, every month
We read everything that comes in and pick one organization each month. If we have questions, we will email you. You will hear from us either way.
- 3
We scope it together
Before anything gets built we agree on exactly what the process is and what done looks like, so twenty hours goes to the work instead of to figuring out the work.
- 4
We build it and hand it over
It runs on your systems, in your hands, with your people able to use it. Then we write about what changed.
Apply for consideration
A few minutes is enough. Be concrete about the work, the applications we can act on describe a specific thing a specific person does over and over.
Not sure you qualify?
Apply anyway. The worst outcome is a conversation about your process, which is worth having regardless. If your situation is genuinely urgent or bigger than this program, reach out directly and we will tell you honestly what it would take.