Austin Woman Magazine: Community TechKnowledge’s Kathryn Engelhardt-Cronk Links Money with Mission
 |
Article: Austin Woman Magazine Vol. V No.7 March, 2007 |
TECH MAVENS: TECHNOLOGY WITH HEART
Community TechKnowledge’s Kathryn Engelhardt-Cronk Links Money with Mission
By Stacy Stroud
“There has to be a better way to do this,” recalls Kathryn Engelhardt-Cronk, with a determined energy that fills the room. “I had the experience, I understood the domain and I knew there had to be a better way. So I did it.”
The bright office occupied by Community TechKnowledge on the 14th floor of the downtown Omni building is busy. A quick tour reveals smartly decorated work areas, impressive views and an enterprise centered on technology where the people are front and center.
These are not your typical back-of-the-house programmers and Engelhardt-Cronk is not your typical tech company CEO. For one, she is a woman. Plus, her background is not in software programming but in social services. Interested to hear how and why someone in social services became CEO of a rapidly growing for-profit company? The story began and continues where her interest remains—in the heart of the nonprofit world.
AUSTIN WOMAN: What does your company do?
KATHRYN-ENGELHARDT-CRONK: Our software helps United Ways and foundations take grant applications online, fund the money online and then track where it’s going. It also helps nonprofits report information to all of their funders in the format that they want it.
AUSTIN WOMAN: How did you make it all happen?
KATHRYN-ENGELHARDT-CRONK: I started my career providing mental health services to adults in Minnesota and years later I joined United Way Austin and was promoted to VP of funds allocation. Suddenly, I was in a position where I was giving out money instead of begging for it. I had always thought that funders had the inside scoop on what they needed to know from the nonprofit, but in truth they were all working from pencil and paper and Excel spreadsheets. The technology they needed simply wasn’t there.
I had some previous MBA-type technology training and knew what it could do, so after a trial project with United Way, using donated computers and software, I thought that I would like to do this on a larger scale.
Kathryn Engelhardt-Cronk grew from a career in social services to CEO and president of a rapidly growing for-profit company.
AUSTIN WOMAN: What were some of the challenges?
KATHRYN-ENGELHARDT-CRONK: When we started this business only 50 to 60 per cent of nonprofits were wired, so there was a lot of education in the first year. One of my biggest challenges was the cultural shift from years in the nonprofit world to the for-profit world. I was used to the mission-driven environment where the bottom line isn’t the issue, and then suddenly we had deadlines and people were sleeping on the floor to get stuff done. I have four children and I was gone a lot. It was really hard to get used to because, working in nonprofits, you didn’t have to miss your kids so much.
It was also really hard to find money. I didn’t look right to institutional investors, coming from a background in social services, and I was a woman.
AUSTIN WOMAN: Why would that make a difference?
KATHRYN-ENGELHARDT-CRONK: A lot of people making money in the late 1990’s and 2000 were kids just out of school with an idea. I went to see an institutional investor with my product built, my money and my friend’s investment. And they said, “We don’t like that you have the product. We just want to buy ideas.”
Also, I wanted to sell to nonprofits. Another investor told me, “Why would we want to give you money to sell to people who don’t make any?” They didn’t understand how nonprofits work. But then, when I talked to angel investors, they got it. For them, it was a way to do business, make money and give something back.
AUSTIN WOMAN: Do you feel that the long hours and sacrifice have paid off?
KATHRYN-ENGELHARDT-CRONK: Absolutely. There’s no way I’m here by accident. That’s the way everyone should feel about the place they work, if they’re lucky, that it’s somehow greater than themselves. And my family is proud of me, proud of this company and what it does for people.
One of our clients, CLUES (Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio), sees 5,000 people every month, all of them below the poverty line. When I first sold to them, I waited in the reception area and watched people wait for hours. Now, CLUES still serves 5,000 people in a month, but they use our software, and no one waits in line.
AUSTIN WOMAN: What are you excited about this year?
KATHRYN-ENGELHARDT-CRONK: We have an exciting new product coming out that is even more affordable. And we won the Greenlights award this year for our Haiku Grant Project. My company wanted to give away a grant without the red tape nonprofits usually have to go through, so we decided to have a contest where we asked nonprofits in Texas to each make a haiku that captured the heart of their mission. Then, at a party, we gave away $5,000 to the winner; two runners-up got their haikus on a huge billboard. We are going to do it again this September.
AUSTIN WOMAN: The winner?
KATHRYN-ENGELHARDT-CRONK: Written by a grant writer at Hospice Austin. It was beautiful:
“ Deep water can drown
or support a long voyage …
Our small boat matters .”
To contact Community TechKnowledge:
Community TechKnowledge Inc.
701 Brazos St., Suite 1425
Austin, TX 78701
Phone: 512-345-9090
Web: www.communitytech.net
