KJ Street Consulting Consolidates Their Data and Saves 100+ Hours / Quarter with FreeAgent CRM — KJ Street Consulting Consolidates Their Data and Saves 100+ Hours / Quarter with FreeAgent CRM

FREEAGENT SUCCESS STORY

Having our entire team collaborate on a project is critical for us. FreeAgent helps us align and coordinate so that we can be more than the sum of our parts.”

KJ Street Consulting

Edmonton, AB

Industry

Consulting

Favorite Feature

Visibility and Reporting

Impact

⬆ 55% Revenue growth

100+ hours saved/quarter

💥100% adoption rate

Community Focused
Empowering communities through expertise
Values-driven Founded on values, driven by purpose
Industry Experience
Leveraging experience to broaden access
Committed to Success
Enabling success, improving outcomes

Our primary goal is to give back to the community that saved our son’s life. That is what drives us.

Community groups are filled with amazing people of different backgrounds, expertise, and abilities. The one thing they all have in common is a big heart. That said, a big heart doesn’t always get them to where they want to go. That’s where we come in.

We don’t just teach people how to fill out a grant form. That part is easy enough. We teach them how to tell their story.

We are not a big philanthropic organization raising hundreds of millions of dollars for a new hospital. We help the little guys build a new park in their community or attain instruments for the school band. We support community organizations and local charities who want to make a difference but don’t know where to begin.

After attaining funding, there is still a lot of work to be done. We help organizations best understand how to allocate funds and set up strategies for accomplishing their goals.

FreeAgent is the foundation that we are building our business upon.“

Jason Street

Founder | KJ Street Consulting

Strengthening Communities Through Access and Expertise

Year after year, the funding for government-backed grant programs grows to bridge the equity gaps that exist in our communities. While these endeavors are indeed making headway, there is a litany of challenges that face any person or group trying to bring this aid to those who need it most. Arduous and confusing application forms, miles of bureaucratic red tape, and lengthy approval processes are just a few obstacles that can limit access to these vital funds.

For the team KJ Street Consulting, this is more than just a systemic issue – it is a personal one. Their founders, Kim and Jason Street, have seen firsthand the amazing work done by the communities who rely on these funds, and they wanted to give back to those who have given them so much. What began as an effort to help garner funding to build a park has evolved into a business that has raised tens of millions of dollars for projects that have benefited dozens of communities and thousands of individuals.

Jason’s business acumen, coupled with Kim’s extensive background in fundraising, proved to be a winning recipe. In just a few short years, KJ Street Consulting went from providing their services to a few local groups they knew personally to offering aid to organizations across the country.

With plans to expand internationally in the coming year, KJ Street Consulting knew they would need to prepare their business for this new phase by building a solid operational foundation. To that end, they sought out a CRM technology platform that would allow them to manage their expanding client base, organize their growing team, and consolidate their services.

After a thorough search that involved gathering recommendations from IT consultants and industry experts, they found FreeAgent CRM. FreeAgent offered a robust toolset that could be configured to handle the unique challenges that KJ Street faced every day. It was simple to use and had a modern design to help the KJ Street team embrace the new software while offering scalability to grow at their own pace.

FreeAgent checked all the boxes, and their team was excited to help KJ Street optimize their processes and maximize their reach.

Objectives

For KJ Street Consulting, navigating the cumbersome world of grant applications, fundraising programs, and charitable donations is their bread and butter. Their results attest to their expertise in the field. Yet, when it comes to managing the business side of things— nurturing client relationships, collaborating with team members, marketing their services, and so on— they needed a little help. It wasn’t knowledge or desire they lacked, but rather the number of hours in a day.

The bulk of their time is spent assisting clients with questions, filling out grant applications forms, contacting local representatives, and creating funding plans for when the money comes in. The day-to-day minutiae of data entry and administrative upkeep had to be put on the back burner in favor of attending to the work that had the biggest impact on their communities. That said, if KJ Street wanted to broaden their reach, they knew they needed a way to keep up with the administrative burden.

FreeAgent CRM knows all too well the challenges that companies like KJ Street face, and we offer all the tools required to help. What’s more, much like the team at KJ Street, we are experts in our field. We know how to help companies organize their operations in a way that not only makes the administrative workload easier but faster and more efficient. We provide everything required to foster better customer relationships, empower employees, analyze business success, scale operations, and improve the workday.

We have so much data that we need to keep track of. All of our clients have a unique story, and all of those stories are important. We needed to record and access all that information, so nothing was missed. The difference between getting a grant approved or getting a grant declined is a fine line, and it’s the details that make the difference.

I used to work for some pretty big companies, and when I would go in and start my day, all the tools I needed to do my job were there. When I would come home and begin to work on our business, I would look at our systems and processes, and we were trying to do everything in Outlook and Excel. So I knew we needed something to help us coordinate our efforts and simplify our operations. I asked around for some recommendations and was directed to FreeAgent. After exploring the demos and meeting some of the team, I knew this was the platform for us.”

Jason Street

Founder | KJ Street Consulting

The team at KJ Street Consulting needed to:

Centralize their account data
Refine their operational processes
Increase visibility across their team
Simplify reporting
Identify their top-performing grants

We’ve used FreeAgent to organize our data into several different apps. One app manages our contacts, another app manages our accounts, and another app contains detailed information on all of the different services we provide. We have a fourth app that we designed to tie all of the other apps together to provide a complete overview of our projects. It’s great that we can set up all of these apps to work the way we want. It gives us real control over our day-to-day.

The ability to track all of our approvals and declinations has helped us identify which grants are most successful and which ones are less so. That will help us make more informed decisions going forward regarding where we invest our time and resources.

The more I use FreeAgent, the more ideas I have for the different things we can do with it. For example, I’ve been exploring the Custom Fields lately and looking at specific information we could track that would help us to create some unique reports. It has begun to take on a life of its own, and I’m excited to keep getting more and more out of the platform.”

Jason Street

Founder | KJ Street Consulting

The Solution

Once KJ Street Consulting found FreeAgent, the work to simplify their processes began. First, the team at KJ Street began to import all of their historical data. They populated the Contacts app with their client list and worked with the FreeAgent team to create a pair of apps to help organize their unique data. One app captured all the information about the KJ Street team’s organizations, while another contained all the details about the services KJ Street Consulting offers.

Finally, another app was created to tie everything together, drawing data from all the other apps to manage a project from start to finish. Suddenly, KJ Street’s team could access everything they needed to assist a client with just one click.

Now, all of KJ Street Consulting’s communications were captured and timestamped. Any notes were attached directly to an account or a contact so that nothing would be missed. The statuses of grant applications or monies awarded were updated in real-time. The time spent pouring over spreadsheets or searching through old emails was eliminated as visibility and accessibility became built-in.

The next step for the KJ Street Consultanting team was to lay the foundation for their reporting and analysis. There are hundreds of grant options available, but they are not all equal. Knowing which grants they have the most success with helps KJ Street determine where to best allocate their resources.

Before FreeAgent, the KJ Street team identified the grants that were approved most frequently versus those that rarely paid off. However, analyzing why certain grants were approved or declined, assessing grant approval timelines, and seeing what information contributed most to an approval was just not possible. Now, all of that information can be compiled with just a few clicks. That data can be accessed and visualized in an array of stunning and beautiful reports that can be shared with ease.

The Impact

Improved collaboration
Streamlined operational processes
Reduced time spent inputting/retrieving data
Optimized reporting capability
Increased Revenue

In only a short time, the team at KJ Street has seen impressive results. For one, their team is already working better together, thanks to the improved access to data that FreeAgent has provided. The KJ street leadership team no longer has to worry if a note is missed or an important piece of information is overlooked because everything their team needs to know it’s right at hand. In addition to providing peace of mind, this saves the team a ton of time.

Another big time-saver has been the ease of reporting. Before using FreeAgent, quarterly reports would have to be compiled manually. That meant going through hundreds of grants, one at a time, and translating that data into a report. With FreeAgent, this is accomplished in just a few clicks. All of the information is captured and recorded for easy distribution, saving the team 70+ hours a quarter and providing deeper insights than were possible before.

As KJ Street Consulting implements even more of the tools that FreeAgent offers, the impacts of their partnership with FreeAgent will continue to mount. FreeAgent’s powerful workflow engine will soon help the KJ Street team cut through the arduous task load of their grant approval process. From start to finish, a typical grant goes through 30-40 different steps and passes through the hands of every single member of the KJ Street team.

By building out a workflow map, KJ Street will use automations and task alerts to speed up hand-offs and reduce the time it takes to move from one phase of the process to another. This will save time and ensure a smoother and more streamlined experience for everybody involved.

The valuable work that KJ Street Consulting does every day makes a huge difference in their community and beyond. As they continue to expand and grow, FreeAgent will be there to help lighten the operational workload, freeing up the KJ Street team to focus on what they do best — helping people attain the resources and know-how they need to improve lives. This is important work, and the FreeAgent team is excited to be a part of it for many years to come.

I used to create all of our reports manually. As we grew our business this was becoming less and less viable. With FreeAgent, I can now generate a report with a few clicks of a button. That will save me 75 hours over a quarter.

Before FreeAgent, we were tracking our grants through six different sources. Now FreeAgent is our single source of truth.

Our revenue has increased 55% in the past fiscal year. That is due to several factors, but there is no question that the efficiencies we’ve been gaining because of FreeAgent are a big part of it.

One of the things I’m really excited about is the workflow engine. Our grant approval process goes through 30-40 steps and somehow involves every member of our company. We are excited to begin streamlining that process through automation.

We had a file share platform that contained more than 100 000 forms. It was not well organized, and if you were trying to find something specific, it could take an entire day. If the file you were looking for was in the wrong place or mislabeled, then you may not be able to find it all. Having that information in FreeAgent has made a big difference for our team and is a key contributor to the time we save every day.

Jason Street

Founder | KJ Street Consulting

FREEAGENT SUCCESS STORY