Testimonials

Karen has helped us make a smooth and accurate transition to fundraising software twice now. The first time in 2011 from Folio to GiftWorks and more recently from GiftWorks to Little Green Light. Her in-depth knowledge of LGL was invaluable throughout our two-year decision-making all the way through the conversion process and initial training. She has continued to provide focused training that helps us use LGL efficiently and effectively to perform day-to-day duties. The Bangor Symphony Orchestra has benefited greatly from Karen’s services and I can’t recommend her enough!

Sarah McCarthy, Director of Development
Bangor Symphony Orchestra

The Hatch Community Youth Fund (www.thehatchfund.org ) is still a relatively new foundation, having been founded in 2012. Since then by the generosity of an increasing number of donors and scholarship participants, the programs have expanded geometrically necessitating a more sophisticated approach to recordkeeping, donor tracking and solicitation, and mailings. From our earliest research to find a solution, Little Green Light stood out as the best available and cost-effective option, and Karen Schaller came highly recommended for her innate talent, knowledge of non-profit organizations, and her exceptional skill as a teacher. From my position as the primary decision-maker, Karen’s professionalism and guidance made our transition a trouble-free success.

Karen Schaller guided The Hatch Community Youth Funds volunteers’ transition from imperfectly tracking donor and participant data in multiple Excel worksheets to the cohesive Little Green Light database. She evaluated and cleaned the awkward, bloated historical data for effective use in LGL, uploaded the data, and trained the Hatch Fund volunteer staff’s use. Additionally, Karen worked with the Board and staff to plan how we would also use LGL to track and report on the scholarship recipients and the scholarship dollars paid out.

The custom training helped us get up to speed, and we were able to begin using LGL right away with good data tracking for both our donors and our scholarship participants. Having all our information organized in one system has made a significant difference in both efficiency and accuracy.

Our transition to Little Green Light (LGL) was successful, and easy, with Karen’s help! She was a thorough, professional, and wonderful teacher. She has become a great resource as we expand our skills to more fully benefit from the many options LGL brings to our organization. With the new database we have become more sophisticated in our approach, using analytical tools that can be shared among board members, staff, and volunteers.

Temple Blackwood, Board Member and Program Chair
Hatch Community Youth Fund, Castine, Maine

Working with Karen Schaller was a distinct pleasure! She is professional, knowledgeable, patient, and friendly. The challenge of migrating to a new database was made easier by Karen’s clear guidance, instructions, and support.

Ginger Aldrich
Development Director

Molly Flanigan
Development + Database Coordinator

Haystack Mountain School of Crafts
Deer Isle, Maine

Our land trust’s conversion from our previous database to Little Green Light was no small feat. We had many years of inconsistent use of that database through staffing changes, which left us with very messy data. We initially tried another database company for about 7 months, which ended up not being a good fit, so made the leap to Little Green Light. As you can imagine, pulling messy data from multiple places seemed like an insurmountable task, but Karen guided us through the process with clarity and efficiency. In the end, not only was our organization’s data cleaner than it had ever been, we were able to implement procedures for keeping our data neat and tidy into the future.

Karen took the time to personalize the new database to our organization’s needs, while also helping to explain some important practices for how we should input the data for future ease in reporting. In the end she walked us through the database in several remote training sessions that our entire staff and several board members were able to attend. This was critical in helping our whole team understand the capability of this new tool, as well as how we can all be using it to make our land trust a more well-oiled machine.

We would, without hesitation, recommend Karen Schaller’s services to anyone looking to migrate to a new database, or for any database consultation needs. We are happy to chat with anyone who would like more specific information about our experience with Karen, or with the new Little Green Light database, which in the short time we’ve been up and running is working out great!

Chrissy Beardsley Allen, Development & Outreach Director
Blue Hill Heritage Trust, Blue Hill, ME