Pay It Forward leverages RPA for faster, error-free data entry at scale

The challenge

Pay It Forward’s process for entering donor information was itself not as complicated as it was tedious. Pertinent data on each of their benefactors is collected throughout the year and stored in an Excel spreadsheet. To secure a tax credit for those donors, Pay It Forward must enter the names, addresses, social security numbers, and other data on each, one-by-one, into an online form provided by the Georgia DOR. The job involves copying, pasting, typing, and submitting a single form for each of Pay It Forward’s thousands of donors.

Because the state’s unusual stipulation gives Pay It Forward just 24 hours to enter all this information, the non-profit has historically been forced to hire up to 30 temporary data entry workers to help with the work.

The influx of manpower is onerous, growing their staff to six-times their regular workforce for just one day each year. It is also costly; Pay It Forward operates on just a 5% operating margin and much of that was spent on their day of temp labor. “In order to get this work done, we would have to bring in temporary labor, train them on how to enter the information, manage them, and monitor their progress,” explained Cary Sinnet, Director at Pay It Forward.

The organization considered several alternatives to make this big job easier. They arrived at Nintex RPA, software, which would automate the process of pulling data from their donor spreadsheet and entering it into the state’s online forms.