Transforming Technology at Rainier Valley Food Bank

Rainier Valley Food Bank (RVFB), a beacon of community support in South Seattle, recognized the need to harness technology more effectively to fulfill its mission: to nourish with good food, empower with knowledge, and serve with compassion. In February 2025, RVFB engaged Forum Solutions to assess and elevate its technology landscape, aiming to unlock greater value from its existing tools and streamline its operations for greater impact.

Challenge 

Like many non-profit organizations, RVFB faced a patchwork of software systems and manual processes that hindered efficiency. Technology solutions evolved organically, resulting in overlapping tools, inconsistent workflows, and rising costs. The organization needed a clear path to integrate, streamline, and modernize its technology infrastructure while ensuring staff alignment and trust in mission-critical data, including how donations are invested in various programs and how many households are served.

Solution

Forum Solutions embarked on a comprehensive “tech health check” for RVFB, with the goal of identifying opportunities to integrate systems, automate manual processes, standardize technology use across staff, and reduce the number of software systems the organization licensed or purchased. This multi-faceted assessment included:

  • Taking inventory of all licensed and in-use systems

  • Conducting in-depth interviews with staff members across Operations, Development, and Admin teams

  • Observing and mapping workflow patterns related to strategic and operational priorities

  • Reviewing internal and external reporting data flows

  • Analyzing the previous year's technology spend for potential cost-saving opportunities

Through this collaborative process, Forum Solutions was able to pinpoint inefficiencies and highlight areas where technology could be a true enabler for efficient internal operations and for executing RVFB’s community programs, including its Mobile Grocery Markets and the Community Connector programs.

Results

Increasing Trust in Reporting & Analytics Data

It became apparent early in the engagement that RVFB’s use of their customer relationship management (CRM) tool, while critical to the organization’s operations, was not living up to its full potential. Years of ad hoc workflow design, technical debt, and a “do it ourselves” approach had left the system cumbersome and inconsistent. Staff found it difficult to extract reliable data for reporting and analytics, undermining trust and slowing decision-making.

RVFB is a small but mighty agency that has grown rapidly over the past few years, and our IT landscape has not kept pace with our needs. With Forum Solution’s help, we defined a way forward to improve the use of our CRM to support our programming and management goals. We also clarified the opportunity to revamp our rollout of our office productivity suite to more effectively support staff collaboration. The team at Forum Solutions has been wonderful to work with and we are so grateful for the partnership!
— Gloria Hatcher-Mays, RVFB Executive Director

Forum Solutions and RVFB worked together to explore options for overcoming CRM-related challenges, including the prospect of switching to a custom CRM. After careful evaluation and thoughtful prioritization, the decision was made to retain the existing CRM, but to invest in targeted optimization:

  • Simplifying and standardizing common workflows

  • Customizing the platform to RVFB’s unique needs

  • Defining the most critical use cases requiring improvement

  • Engaging a CRM expertise with deep non-profit expertise

The CRM expert offered flexible support models to fit RVFB’s needs, ranging from discrete workflow improvement projects to ongoing administrative support.

Improving Office Collaboration Tools to Increase Productivity and Alignment 

RVFB implemented an office productivity suite across the organization a few years back, and, while generally satisfied with the solution, struggled to drive adoption across the organization. Most urgently, RVFB wanted to improve document management practices around the creation, storage and sharing of files. We observed inconsistent use of collaboration tools and file management systems. Sending documents back and forth in email for collaboration remained a frequent practice, as did storing multiple versions of a document while iterating on the content. This led to a large and unstructured set of files in various places (with varying levels of access to individuals and teams), and staff struggled to find the “source of truth” for a given document.

Office productivity tools are highly effective for team collaboration, with sophisticated workflows and a versioning system that ensures nothing is lost. It can also become complex if not thoughtfully set up in the first place. The end user experience should be simple and worry-free, in terms of individuals understanding where and how to create and save, collaborate on and access shared documents. We helped RVFB crystallize the most urgent need and sourced a resource that will help the organization simplify their document management system and develop best practices for staff members to adopt.

Building Trust and Efficiency

By recommitting to a CRM with expert external guidance, RVFB set the stage for:

  • Greater efficiency through automation and workflow integration

  • Consistent technology use and reduced software sprawl

  • Increased staff confidence in the data used for internal decision-making and external reporting

  • A scalable foundation for further innovation, including plans to expand the CRM’s use to inventory management and new community programs that are on the organization’s roadmap after the imminent move into a bigger facility.

And by committing to cleaning up the “wild west” of their current file storage practices, RVFB will gain increased staff productivity by simplifying how documents are created, shared, and accessed, ensuring everyone can reliably find and work with the correct files. Rather than wasting precious hours wading through convoluted folder structures, staff can devote more time to building and implementing programs that further the organization’s mission.

RVFB’s partnership with Forum Solutions has laid the groundwork for a technology transformation that will help the organization deliver even more value to its community. By embracing a philosophy of continuous improvement and investing in the right expertise, RVFB is poised to lead as a data-driven, mission-focused non-profit.

Forum Solutions is a management consulting company dedicated to crafting and delivering transformational outcomes for our clients, our colleagues, and our community. With our help, clients become more agile, resilient, and connected, bringing great ideas to fruition with brilliant results. From start-ups to the Fortune 50, business leaders rely on Forum Solutions to help them form and realize their strategies. Our company is a certified Woman Owned Business that believes in developing and growing our colleagues, company, and region in a socially conscious way.

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