How Social Solutions’ technologists are making cutting-edge tech available outside the private sector
Nonprofits are doing amazing work each and every day. And like most of the world's industries, they’re seeking technology to boost their impact even more.
Enter Social Solutions, a tech company dedicated to helping nonprofit organizations leverage data in more meaningful ways. Whether by helping organizations run more efficiently or creating automated systems to track the work they’re doing on the ground, Social Solutions’ software acts like a nonprofit’s own personal data science and solutions team.
Here’s how the technologists behind Social Solutions’ product think about using software for good and building cutting-edge products for organizations outside the private sector.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY HANNAH KOEHLER
FOUNDED: 2000
EMPLOYEES: 242 nationally, 194 in Austin.
WHAT THEY DO: The company specializes in building software that helps organizations use their data in meaningful ways, specifically in the areas of human services and workforce and education programs — most of which are also nonprofits.
WHERE THEY DO IT: Austin
HAPPY PARENTS, HAPPY OFFICE: When families grow, Social Solutions is ready. The company offers six weeks of paid birthing parental leave and three weeks of non-birthing parental leave.
ONE SALE AT A TIME: Not sure how nonprofits work? Ask a Social Solutions salesperson — they’ll be able to tell you everything you’d ever want to know.
Joel Martins, Chief Technology Officer
As CTO, Joel leads the engineering team at Social Solutions. His job is to challenge the company’s engineers to be innovative and learn new things while going as fast as they can responsibly go.
BEYOND WORK: Joel has a passion for woodworking. His workshop is his happy place, where he likes to spend his free time building furniture for his kids.
What do you think is different about the ways your engineers approach Social Solutions’ product offerings?
There are two unique characteristics to the way we build software: One is learning and the other is listening. On the learning front, we understand that research and development is much more research than development when you’re working on software.
As for listening, we don’t just seek solutions when talking to the people who will ultimately use our products. I call this the “Better Blockbuster” approach. If you had asked me way back when what I wanted from Blockbuster, I would have probably started with the solution: I need Blockbuster to stock more copies of the hot new movie so there’s always one on the shelf. But the problem that I actually had was that when I wanted to rent the hot new movie, it wasn’t always available. Enter Netflix — who understood my problem, not my suggested solution — and poof! The rest is history.
We strive to create a team that’s continuously learning and evolving. It’s actually quite common for us to have different opinions on how to solve problems.”
How has Social Solutions enabled a nonprofit to do things that would have been otherwise beyond its technical scope? What were the outcomes?
I was recently humbled when I toured a women’s homeless shelter in the Denver area. I saw the buses they use to move women from dangerous areas of the city to a secure location. I saw the classrooms where the facility offers educational programs. I saw the rooms where they offer mental health sessions.
My software platform plays a small, but important, part in that mission. We help them keep track of all their programs and offerings, helping the shelter to understand which activities are most effective so they can reach their goals and prove their impact in ways that makes their organization more attractive to new donors.
How does your team handle situations in which developers have different opinions on how to solve technical challenges?
We strive to create a team that’s continuously learning and evolving. It’s actually quite common for us to have different opinions on how to solve problems. That’s natural! In our learning organization, we typically take the “try it and see” approach. If we can afford to try both solutions, let’s give it a shot. We’ll learn something.
At the same time, we keep our clients at the forefront of our problem-solving mentality. It’s more important for our clients to be happy than any one individual in our team to be right.
Jaya Zenchenko, Lead Data Scientist
Jaya is the lead data scientist at Social Solutions, where she works closely with John (profiled above) to help create the data science vision for the company while leading the data science and analytics team.
BEYOND WORK: Jaya has a deep love of historical fiction and documentaries. In her spare time, she disappears into different times and places — everything from novels by the Bronte sisters to Doctor Zhivago — to learn more about how people think and the things that motivate them.
Explain how Social Solutions approaches onboarding new employees. How did your training give you the information you need to do your job and do it well?
The Social Solutions training was the most extensive onboarding experience I’ve had at any company. We talked about the company’s mission and learned about specific nonprofits we are helping, and the impact our product is having in the community. We took a personality test that highlights our communication style, giving newcomers a tool to understand ourselves and how to approach others at the company.
We also covered how to give and receive feedback, which I was so impressed with. I was used to seeing this type of training in management classes, but it’s not something that everyone normally gets trained on.
I love being at the forefront of bringing change to how nonprofits help people and tell the story of their impact.”
As a veteran of the Austin data science community, what about Social Solutions’ approach to building a product is different?
Data science is simultaneously really broad and fairly new to a lot of companies. Every data science team is structured in a different way. I’ve been on all kinds of data science teams, including ones that take a centralized approach, where all the data scientists are on one team, as well as an embedded structure, where data scientists are embedded on different business teams.
This is the first time I’ve worked directly on a product team, rather than as part of engineering. Knowing that my ideas and initiatives go directly into building out the product roadmap makes embedding data science and analytics into the product seem realistic in a way it never has before.
What part of your job most excites you right now?
I love being at the forefront of bringing change to how nonprofits help people and tell the story of their impact. My first job out of graduate school was on Department of Defense contracts, and I had opportunities to work on products that impacted our troops and national security — to work on life or death problems is exciting and scary.
I feel that I’m in that place again, where the work I do is changing the lives of individuals that nonprofits are affecting. It’s hopefully not a life or death situation, but it’s definitely life altering.
John Manganaro, SVP of Product and Data Science
As the SVP of product and data science, John’s team works side by side with clients from design through delivery to make sure the company is building for their needs and not their own biases.
BEYOND WORK: John is a big outdoors person. At 15, John climbed the Grand Teton and fell in love with mountaineering and climbing. Since then, he’s hiked across parks in Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, Wyoming and Idaho.
We’re hearing about AI a lot these days in the private sector — not so much in the nonprofit sphere. How is your team using AI tools to empower nonprofits?
Oftentimes, companies rush to build sexy models before they build a strong foundation for them with data structure and data capture. When we hired Jaya Zenchenko, our lead data scientist (profiled above), she and I shared our vision for what AI and machine learning could mean to the nonprofit community — but we know it starts with gathering the right data. To start this journey, we are focusing on working with our clients to align their mission to their outcomes, and our platforms are helping them to start tracking activity data that leads to those desired outcomes.
We want to help answer the question of how nonprofits can build a path to successful outcomes.”
What are a few of the ways that predictive analytics will change how nonprofits function moving forward? How is Social Solutions driving this trend?
The people who power these nonprofit organizations are amazingly dedicated, mission-focused workers. They are often people who dedicate their education and careers to helping others. Each of their brains contains millions of data points tied to how they are going to help each specific individual — in essence, they are walking algorithms. We want those data points to power their software platforms by aggregating their experiences to build prescriptive paths for the people they help. We want to help answer the question of how nonprofits can build a path to successful outcomes.
What made you decide to join the team at Social Solutions? What was the opportunity, both technical and otherwise?
I loved my interviews with my peers on the leadership team. Our CEO, Kris Nimsger, is a phenomenal leader, and her track record is something I aim to emulate as a future leader. We have a diverse group at Social Solutions that leverage different backgrounds and experiences to grow our company. I am excited to walk in the door every day and work with my colleagues at Social Solutions.
