Building a Digital Foundation for Nonprofits: The Haldane School Foundation at 25

The Haldane School Foundation recently celebrated its 25th anniversary with a refreshed brand and digital presence.

That’s the visible part. What mattered just as much was everything underneath it. Building a digital foundation for a nonprofit is what allows growth to actually sustain itself.

As organizations grow, the gap shows up in the same place every time—not in intent, but in infrastructure. The mission is clear. The people are committed. But the systems don’t keep up.

That’s where this project started.

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The Right Time to Build

I’ve been a trustee with the foundation for over five years, now serving as the longest-tenured member.

This wasn’t a new idea. It was something I knew we needed for a long time—bringing structure, clarity, and a real digital foundation behind the work. But timing matters. You don’t force operational change into an organization that isn’t ready to support it.

This year, with new leadership in place, the timing aligned.

So we moved.

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From Effort to System: A Digital Foundation for Nonprofits

For years, the foundation ran on effort. Volunteers doing great work, but spending time on things that shouldn’t require effort anymore (email coordination, document access, application processing, scattered data).

It works… until it doesn’t scale.

So we rebuilt the foundation around Google for Nonprofits. Not as a tool rollout, but as an operating system.

• Gmail for every trustee
• Structured Google Drive with defined permissions and groups
• Shared access to documents, not versions of documents
• Google Forms powering scholarship and grant applications
• Google Analytics and Search Console to understand how we are found
• BigQuery as a starting point for understanding our data
• Gemini layered in to extend what a volunteer organization can realistically do
• Google Ad Grants unlocking up to $10K/month in search to expand reach

This wasn’t about adding technology.. it was more about removing friction.

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Structure Is What Makes It Work

The most important part wasn’t provisioning accounts. It was designing how everything connects.

Permissions mapped to roles.
Groups mapped to responsibilities.
Folders mapped to how the organization actually operates.

The shared Drive became one of the most critical components, because without structure, shared access becomes shared chaos.

Once the system was in place, we documented it. SOPs for onboarding new trustees. Clear expectations for how things are organized, accessed, and maintained.

That’s what turns tools into systems.

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Time Back to the Mission

The impact shows up in small, compounding ways.

Applications that used to take hours to process now flow in cleanly.
Information is where it’s expected to be.
Access isn’t a bottleneck.
Work doesn’t get recreated.

For a volunteer-driven organization, that matters.

Every hour saved operationally is an hour redirected to what the foundation actually exists to do, supporting students and expanding educational opportunities.

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What This Really Represents

The rebrand marks 25 years. The systems behind it mark the next 25.

A refreshed identity without an operational foundation doesn’t hold. But when both move together, it changes how the organization operates.

For me, this is the intersection that matters—where strategy, systems, and execution come together in a way that actually works.

And in this case, it’s applied to something that matters beyond the work itself.

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Ready to build systems that scale your nonprofit? Let’s talk.