In 2017, I had just started working at a media arts education non-profit in the San Francisco Bay Area. When I joined this decades-old and much beloved organization, I learned that the youth programs I oversaw relied heavily on dozens of Google Sheets, Google Docs, and lengthy emails for managing the day to day. With information decentralized and scattered across files and platforms, I knew I needed to move quickly and efficiently since programming was about to start.

Where do we begin?

Before developing a game plan, I needed to better understand what it was like to be a teaching artist leading an after-school media arts class with 12 high school students. So, between conversations with the teachers, sitting in at the start of their classes, and gathering contextual details from the program coordinators, I researched project management software and knowledge management. I came across two tools that met the criteria I had set based on my conversations with the teachers and coordinators: easy to use and customizable.

Basecamp made sense for project management. But, it wouldn’t solve a challenge all but one teacher experienced: tracking class attendance. Since the teachers - as part time staff- did not have access to Salesforce, the organization’s CRM, the program coordinator relied on teachers or the teaching assistants to track attendance, a requirement set by the program’s local government funder. The program coordinator would then manually enter the data to Salesforce. This repetitive task took extra time for the coordinator to do, which could be re-directed in a variety of creative and relational ways like supporting teachers or nurturing relationships with parents of students enrolled in our programs.

What do we build?

In addition to being customizable, Airtable’s colorful interface made data pop out. Sorting, filtering, and organizing data seemed intuitive to me in a way that I had never experienced with Google Sheets much less Excel. And just like that, I was hooked on using Airtable!

I replicated the class tracker teachers had used in Sheets and made slight changes. Now, there were drop down options instead of empty cells under the “Date - attendance” columns. With this minor change, we reduced the number of things a teacher or teaching assistant had to do 12 times for their 12 students.

How do we build capacity?

After the program coordinator finalized the base, I prioritized training the teaching team at the next team meeting. Simplifying the number of decisions and what types of decisions we asked of the teachers not only improved their experience with data, but also made the program coordinator’s workflow easier since they no longer had to remind teachers to track class attendance.

The case for no code tools

This workplace experience transformed how I approach all of my projects, professional and personal. Airtable provided my team an opportunity to re-imagine how to interpret and do an administrative task. I’m trained in social work, not in computer science or any other technical field. But Airtable, like other no code tools, allows me to leverage the power of programming languages without needing to code and to do so with speed and customization.

Working in a mission-driven environment with limited staff, time, or resources is a challenge shared by many in the social impact sector and those leading a new or small business. Not everyone has access to large budgets or a developer on staff to design and build tools and websites to support our goals. No single tool can do all the things. That’s ok! It is an exciting time to re-imagine how we work, communicate, and play with the help of no code tools, which are incredibly powerful when leveraged with intention, curiosity, and inclusion as anchors.