The Challenge
A prestigious African entrepreneur alliance ran its selective fellowship program on Excel spreadsheets — a system riddled with data integrity issues, manual data transfer, broken workflows, and communication breakdowns. With only 3 full-time staff and 3 part-time volunteers managing a three-round interview process, the fragile setup risked overlooking talent and damaging organizational credibility under pressure.
Our Approach
We implemented a three-phase integration: a custom Airtable database as the single source of truth with multi-stage pipeline tracking, Zapier automation to eliminate manual data entry and conditionally route applicants to the right interviewers, and Mailchimp for stage-specific, fellow-type-segmented communications across every round.
Outcomes
100% elimination of manual data entry across all three selection rounds
Zero data loss across 5,000+ applicants in a single cycle
6-person team confidently managed a process that previously required far more overhead
Scalable CRM infrastructure built for long-term relationship management beyond the fellowship
