Dayspring Partners

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive director of Christians for Social Action. We’re an education advocacy group that helps faith communities get involved with justice issues.

What challenge were you trying to address with Dayspring Partners?

There were two challenges for the project. First, we were changing our organization’s name and we didn’t have a brand identity. We needed a visual identity that included designs and a new logo.

Secondly, we were having problems with our website — it wasn’t easy to navigate. There was a ton of excellent content that wasn't appearing on the platform. It was a clunky website that couldn’t run on mobile. We needed a team to create a brand new website and migrate a lot of content to that new platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

For the branding project, we tasked Dayspring Partners to design a family of brand logos for our parent organization and five programs under that. The team came up with an integrated visual identity to resonate with our current and aspiration audiences.

As for the web development task, the team created a platform that could manage 200 pages of article content. They incorporated a new content library, navigation system, registration features, and application materials.

Aside from those, we also gave them specific requirements for the home page navigating, sorting, and searching. For this part, Dayspring Partners used WordPress and Salsa CRM to integrate the features into our current system.

What is the team composition?

We worked with three people from Dayspring Partners’ design team for the branding project — Ed (Senior Designer), Janet (Design Lead), and a branding strategist. On the web development side, Janet was tasked to be the project lead. We also worked with Chi-Ming (Principal) who focused on analytics, as well as Jonathan (Senior Engineer) and Jason (Engineer).

How did you come to work with Dayspring Partners?

I’ve worked with Dayspring Partners on a previous project at my previous job. I appreciated their ethos and they really understood our situation. During the discovery and initial brief of the problem, the group had a grasp on our brand. We’ve worked with other design groups in the past and they don’t get the full scope of our brands. With Dayspring Partners, we saw that they had a real learning posture to understand and come up with innovative solutions.

Also, I would say that they presented great value for us. They may have been a higher bid compared to other agencies but they brought a smart group of people to the table.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $15,000–$20,000 for the branding project and $80,000–$90,000 for the web development side. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement ran from March–September 2020.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Dayspring Partners came up with innovative creations that affected our business model in positive ways. There are no metrics for the branding task but the general feedback and reception we’ve had from end-users has been phenomenal. People love the new design and the energy it gives off.

As for the website, we’re still working on the analytics to measure their success but we have seen an increase in the traffic. We saw our old content, which was previously lost, find new audiences. 

We’re tracking the innovations that the team incorporated and we’re excited to see our audiences respond to those. People are using the features and the platform the way we had hoped. 

How did Dayspring Partners perform from a project management standpoint?

The communication was excellent. Dayspring Partners was great in terms of meeting deadlines. We communicated through email but there wasn’t a joint project management tool that was shared across our ends. The team had their own internal project management style. Whenever I give any feedback, the team would be responsive to that. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Dayspring Partners is a group of smart and talented people who are ready to listen and work with you. I was impressed with how their company treated their staff and employees — they’re an ethical organization and it was good to work or be associated with them. They stood out from a values standpoint, not just in professionalism and delivering the projects. Overall, the team had a high level of integrity. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Since this was our first major web redesign and branding project, we weren’t familiar with the whole process. I think we could have used a little bit more orientation on the terms and personal capacity. They could have given a more upfront orientation for us which could’ve been helpful.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about the objective but also give the team a chance to think about the best solution for the project. Treat Dayspring Partners as problem-solving partners and give them the freedom to help you solve problems. They might end up with something better than what you thought you wanted.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the dean of workforce development for a local community college. In my role, I oversee career education and workforce programs.

What challenge were you trying to address with Dayspring Technologies?

We wanted to upgrade the career education and career services sections of our website. 

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Dayspring Technologies handles the information architecture for our site’s career sections, redesigning the layout as well as creating new pages. 

Even though our CMS is somewhat outdated, they’ve been able to add a lot of infographics, pictures, and embedded videos. They’ve also recommended menu bars and additional features to make the site easier to navigate.

What is the team composition? 

Paul (Designer, Dayspring Technologies) is our main point of contact. I regularly meet with him to check in on projects and updates, though I’m sure there are others working in the background.

How did you come to work with Dayspring Technologies?

The college went through a procurement process to select them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent roughly $100,000, so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started some time in February 2018, and the work is still ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It’s been excellent. They’re very thorough and detail-oriented.

How did Dayspring Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They use a spreadsheet to keep track of all of our projects, including status updates on the pages that they’re working on. I appreciate that they stay in regular communication with our team via email and ask questions to clarify what we want to be done.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed with their creativity and recommendations. They’ve made the site easier to navigate.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can't think of anything. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The more work you do upfront to clarify the project scope and expectations, the easier it is to move forward with implementation.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Matchwell, an online marketplace that connects healthcare clinicians with healthcare organizations, primarily around a flexible workforce.

What challenge were you trying to address with Dayspring Technologies?

We needed a partner to build an MVP of our technology marketplace.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Dayspring Technologies helped us identify different technological components that we should integrate into our platform, and they also consulted on some of the UX/UI work. They developed the entire web platform and mobile apps from scratch, identifying a data storage CRM tool that was fully integrated with an applicant tracking system. After that, they built the mobile platform to connect all of the different products into one seamless experience. Everything is mobile optimized, working on any screen size and any device. We’re currently working on the plans for version 2.0.

What is the team composition?

The team changes depending on the phase of the project. Our main point of contact is the principal, and the rest of the team ranges from 2–6 people, including a project manager, developers, and Salesforce expert.

How did you come to work with Dayspring Technologies?

We identified them as a partner based on their technological capabilities.

What is the status of this engagement?

We partnered in February 2018, and the work is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since launching the MVP, we’ve had zero issues or bugs. The code is high quality, and the team did a phenomenal job.

How did Dayspring Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We have weekly sprint reviews, even after launching the MVP, to review things and make any necessary changes. With many other vendors, much of the project management work fell on my shoulders, but Dayspring Technologies is different. They’re highly organized and make sure the project is on track.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The principal is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He’s highly competent and organized, helping us have a successful partnership. They’re a valuable partner that we plan to continue working with—I can’t imagine doing this project without them. Lots of other agencies do the bare minimum, but Dayspring Technologies is vital to our team. They have integrity and transparency, which lets us trust them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of any ways they could improve. Even if they make a mistake, they always own it and tell us how they’re going to make it up.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Come prepared to move quickly and get lots of tasks done. Be organized and ready to go, and that will optimize the partnership.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive director of Mercy Corps, an NGO that is running a program called MicroMentor.

What challenge were you trying to address with Dayspring Technologies?

We hired them more than 10 years ago when we were first building our MicroMentor online application. We were looking for a vendor who could build the platform and maintain it.  

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their involvement was originally around developing the web application. That was more than 10 years ago, and they’ve continued to be our partner to develop, maintain, and host the platform, as well as make additional changes to it. All of their work is done with PHP.

This has included some design iterations. We’ve been through a couple of big shifts or upgrades to the site and several feature improvements. One of the big updates was in 2015, when we did a reskin project and upgraded the UI. They also helped us design and build the enterprise product that we sell to customers. When we were doing these enterprise product sales in our early years, they were even be involved in discovery meetings with us, as almost an extension of our team. We leaned on them for expertise, in addition to the development work itself.

What is the team composition?

Overall, including our main team and the principal partners, we worked with 5–6 people. We had constant support from their architect and one junior coder. We gave them use cases and told them what we wanted to achieve. If the project has UX requirements, they brought in a UX person from their team. If it were just a code change, their engineering team would take care of it.

How did you come to work with Dayspring Technologies?

Our director at the time had some connections in the Bay Area and sought out partners through those—Dayspring came recommended. We had been through a competitive RFP process for the actual design work with a different company, so with the design and product definition done, they were given to Dayspring, who built the whole thing.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Dayspring around June 2007, and it’s ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

In terms of mentoring connections, when we first started, we were making about 900 matches a year. We now make 10,000 a year, and Dayspring has been part of that journey. We’ve become a more global platform, with a presence in over 100 countries, in English, Spanish, French, and soon, Indonesian. Dayspring has been with us through the language iterations and the expansion of language portals. We have over 60,000 entrepreneurs and over 20,000 mentors on the platform today.

How did Dayspring Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re working on several different large projects, which each need separate support owners. Dayspring has been helpful in that, thanks to their flexibility. We have a project management system that’s quite well-honed. They have a well-defined internal process and have helped guide us to a process on our end too. We didn’t have an in-house engineering team, so that was especially useful. They have a detailed method for management, but they’re also flexible and adjust to what we need.

Our product owners used Basecamp for regular communication, and we’ve used a Trello board to manage sprints. I’ve been in touch with their management team over email and have also gone to their office in San Francisco for two-hour strategy sessions. I got input from them on how to approach the future of the platform, and they’ve always been accommodating within available hours.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a conscientious and thoughtful organization, who are really about doing good. This is why they’ve been such a good partner for us: they believe in their work and always respond to our needs in a way that’s understanding of the fact that we’re resource-constrained and depend on them. They never pushed any services on us; they understood that we had a long-term partnership.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They have a lot of experience and expertise, but they could be a bit more forthcoming when it comes to strategic insights and guidance for people like me, without a lot of experience in the technology space. It would be good to have an annual review process, to go over what we’ve done and how we can improve the process the next year. We have had meetings, but not as review processes.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

No, I can't name anything.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a consultant for the Fund for Shared Insight. I managed a project that involved building a custom web application for nonprofits.

What challenge were you trying to address with Dayspring Technologies?

One of our clients needed a web app that could be used to replace one-on-one coaching for a particular set of processes. The previous web app they had was very static, so we needed to make it more interactive and effective at helping people get through a five-step process.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Dayspring designed and developed a resource web app on WordPress, including wireframes. They've integrated SurveyMonkey, Salesforce, and a campaign monitor that sends emails out to users based on where they are in the process.

What is the team composition?

We mostly work with John (Managing Principal, Dayspring Technologies), Janet (Designer, Dayspring Technologies), and James (Designer, Dayspring Technologies).

How did you come to work with Dayspring Technologies?

We'd worked with them in the past, so we've had a good relationship with them for a long time.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested over $200,000 thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together sometime in 2016 and the relationship is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The web app Dayspring built has been very well received by users. We're very happy with the level of customization they've integrated into the app–it's top-notch and very interactive.

How did Dayspring Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They're very organized, responsive, and clear in communications. We often meet with them in person or use Zoom for meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They genuinely care about our success and user experience, taking the time to understand our challenges and coming up with great solutions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. We've been very impressed with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Work with John–he's been fantastic!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of information and research for a trade association dedicated to omega–3 oils. We work with scientific and market research.

What challenge were you trying to address with Dayspring Technologies?

We needed a way to catalog 37,000 published, scientific articles.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I provided wireframes ahead of time to give them a sketch of how I thought things should look. They really impressed me with what they proposed so quickly.

They created a database based off of PHP to store the articles. They also created a web interface to manage the entry of opinions about the articles. They did all the frontend design work. The backend design is partly mine and partly theirs.

Although it’s a relatively small database, the data entry process was fairly complicated. Each opinion has to be entered by two people independently. If the database gives a different reason, then it needs to be decided by a third opinion.

It’s an internal database, but it’s going to become outward-facing soon.

What is the team composition?

I work with 3–4 people on their team who were developers and project managers.

How did you come to work with Dayspring Technologies?

I received recommendations from 3–4 people who told me that Dayspring is fantastic.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2016 and the work is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It works flawlessly and does exactly what we needed it to do.

How did Dayspring Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

I have nothing but good things to say. They’re responsive, fast, and very detail-oriented. They make sure to develop exactly what I need. They’re very flexible when I come up with something new and they find a way to make it work. We change our minds a lot, but they keep up with us. We learned a lot as we were doing it. We use Skype, phone, and email, and when necessary, we fly in and talk to them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re dedicated to making sure everything is exactly what I need.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of the American Red Cross Military and Veteran Caregiver Network (MVCN).

What challenge were you trying to address with Dayspring Technologies?

We had a concept of what we wanted to do in regards to using technology to connect the members of our Network. We needed to find a partner that could help us build it from the ground up.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Dayspring was deeply involved with all aspects of the MVCN and its technology. They designed and built a WordPress website. The key functionality requirement was integrating the site with Salesforce in order to capture caregivers’ information. They also managed the Salesforce integration of several other technology pieces, including a custom push-field platform that connectes caregivers. They set up Basecamp and a sandbox testing environment so we could communicate about any necessary refinements.

What is the team composition?

In the initial stages, we worked with five team members on a regular basis.

How did you come to work with Dayspring Technologies?

Our former IT project manager found them, and I inherited the project from her

How much have you invested with them?

We have an ongoing contract of $20,000 a year but it was much higher during the initial stages. We’ve spent around $100,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement started January 2015. The website was completed and officially ready to launch in May 2015. They remain a trusted vendor. They’re our Salesforce consultant and host the website.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Everything is up and running, and it's flawless. We launched the new site at a Hidden Hero Caregiver event that was hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama and the Elizabeth Dole Foundation. The only feedback we received was how great it looks and that it’s everything our Network needed. The site is very user friendly and caregiver-focused. We were very intentional in using caregiver feedback to build the website, and Dayspring delivered on all requested features.

Because of their work, we've been able to build out a custom community in Salesforce. I've had the pleasure of showing it to other nonprofits as a “gold star” example of Salesforce community customization.

How did Dayspring Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re phenomenal and they managed the project beautifully. Everyone at Dayspring makes themselves available, so I never felt like I was asking a bad question or bothering anyone with my numerous inquiries. They’re very responsive and I never went more than a couple hours without getting an answer to a question.

We’ve never met in person but used the Zoom platform as well as email, Basecamp, and phone calls. If there’s ever any concern, I can reach out to them and they’ll make any requested changes. Our team highly treasures the relationship. If I could only have one vendor, it would be Dayspring.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Of all the tech companies that I've worked with, Dayspring is far and away the most patient with a group of people that are less than tech savvy. They really went above and beyond to make sure we felt comfortable and understood what was happening without ever making us feel like idiots.

John (managing principal, Dayspring Technologies) and Jessica (Salesforce consultant, Dayspring Technologies) are the absolute best people to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of one.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m VP of internet and e-commerce at a sporting goods store.

For what projects/services did your company hire Dayspring Technologies?

They developed and maintained our custom website, which offers dedicated e-commerce portals for various teams.

What were your goals for this project?

The site needed to be user-friendly and manageable.

How did you select this vendor?

One of my colleagues selected them.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

They built a customized PHP application.

What was the team composition?

The team included a project manager, a business lead, and developers. We added in-house IT resources for enhancements.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The site’s our fastest-growing and most lucrative e-commerce application. The PHP platform was innovative to our business model. We’re now able to target new markets.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Both sides had a single point of contact. The arrangement was extremely effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were a nimble team that responded quickly to requests. The project manager and lead developer stood out for his coding expertise. He also learned our business to anticipate my team’s needs.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

Their smaller size is disadvantageous for providing 24-hour support.