Before Nick Balser was the VP of Finance and Operations for the Young Catholic Professionals organization, he was a young professional on the move, having lived in the Bay Area and West Africa in the few years since he left his native Dallas, Texas. Of all the adjustments required with such major transitions, he found it especially challenging to find like-minded connections who shared his Catholic faith. Young Catholic Professionals was created to unite and guide people like Nick, and, as he says, they “do that by hosting speaking events, regular happy hours, and retreats every month, basically [bringing] young professionals together in a safe environment to feel encouraged and have some accountability that they’re not the only ones out there walking through this stage of their life.”
Since Balser joined the organization in late 2015, YCP has opened ten new chapters and grown by 200%, mostly from individuals reaching out to the organization rather than the other way around. As for tracking and uniting these rapidly growing chapters? That’s where NationBuilder came in. “It was a technology that we needed to aid our expansion,” Balser says. “Every chapter was maybe set up on three or four different platforms trying to do email, contact management, membership, and doing all its communication via social media. NationBuilder helped us pull a lot of that into one place. As a whole, we’ve been really pleased with how it’s helped connect all of our organizations.”
