Launched in 1991 as a faith-based organization focused on helping homeless families, Rainbow Village has grown by leaps and bounds over the course of the last three decades. Once based out of Christ Episcopal Church in Norcross as Rainbow House, the nonprofit could serve up to two families at a time with transitional housing. Today, this self-described “community of transformation” boasts a sprawling campus of five apartment buildings and an early childhood development center designed to serve up to 30 families at a time through its comprehensive program of life skills classes, counseling, youth mentoring, child care and so much more. Unfortunately, like many nonprofits, Rainbow Village has been relying heavily on largely outdated technology. Through the Dream Big Grant Fund, a technology services grant recently awarded by TechBridge, this community of transformation will be able to undergo a little transformation of its own.

The TechBridge Dream Big Grant Program is a new matching grant opportunity focused on delivering technology transformations to nonprofits on the frontlines of poverty alleviation in their communities. It increases the capacity of nonprofits and provides them necessary resources to fulfill projects they are not otherwise able to include in their constrained budgets. Rainbow Village was selected this year to receive a $30,000 Dream Big Grant to overhaul its current digital systems, consolidate information, streamline processes and build better services.

“Through our current system, we don’t always have immediate access to the files that we need,” explained Melanie Conner, CEO for Rainbow Village. “This grant will help us develop modules that will automate many of the tasks associated with all of our programs. Automating these tasks will enable us to provide better data to our investors and future funders, while highlighting what we’re doing well and where we need to improve. That serves as a benefit to our funders, our investors, our staff and – most importantly – the families we serve. In addition to allowing us to mine the data and look up information with the click of a button, this grant will make it possible for us to keep our focus where it needs to be – on the families in our Village. It will help us change lives as we will be able to spend more time with the families, listening to them rather than turning to a computer or digging through files to look up information. It will help us do as much as we can for as long as we can for as many as we can. The Dream Big Grant will actually grant our families the opportunity to dream big! We are incredibly grateful to TechBridge for selecting our organization as a recipient of the Dream Big Grant.”