GreenLight: Engagement Tracker

Overview

GreenLight Fund Detroit invests in nonprofits that tackle local social challenges. Its relationships with investors, residents, philanthropic partners and government lived mostly in people’s heads. I co-led a 6-person 180 Degrees Consulting team to turn that work into a system, and to build the tools to run it.

• 01PlaybookCommunity EngagementCurrent practice vs. trust-based philanthropy and collective impact, with Detroit case studies
• 02PlaybookInvestor StewardshipAn investor lifecycle from prospecting to stewardship, benchmarked on the Veritus Group model
• 03PlanCommunity surveyResident-led, 3-minute mobile surveys, a $50 raffle, and a 30-day “You Spoke, We Listened” report
• 04Web appEngagement TrackerLog investor, community, philanthropic and government interactions, track follow-ups, and run reports

1. Figmaprototype
2. React 18Tailwind, Recharts
3. Supabaselogin and data
4. Vercelhosting
5. Handoffguide and repo

What I tried that didn’t work

• Testing charts with clean sample data. Tidy test data made every chart look right. We wrote data designed to break them instead: empty periods, missing fields and edge-case values. That found problems ordinary data hid.

A tradeoff I made, and why

Managed services over custom infrastructure. Supabase and Vercel limit how far the tracker can be customized. But GreenLight is a small team without engineers, and they had to keep it running after we left. Login, the database and hosting are handled for them.

Short surveys over complete ones. A 3-minute survey collects less than a long one, but a survey residents never finish collects nothing. So we kept it short, made the surveyors residents, and promised a report back within 30 days.

What I learned

• As a project manager, scope is the job. Two playbooks, a survey strategy and a working app in about ten weeks only fit because the plan was broken down week by week from the start.
• Build for whoever runs it next. What the client can maintain mattered more than what was most interesting to build.
• Prototype before you code. Agreeing on the Figma prototype first meant the build was about doing, not debating.
• Test data should try to break things. Data written to find edge cases is worth more than data that makes the demo look good.