Case Study: FUEL Education achieves streamlined data management and 92% college persistence with Bonterra Apricot

FUEL Education - Customer Case Study

FUEL Education is a Boston-based nonprofit (founded 2009) that helps low-income families save for college and builds parent engagement to improve students’ higher-education outcomes. As the program grew, spreadsheet-based tracking and manual mail-merge reporting proved slow, error-prone, and unable to support data sharing across its community partners.

With funding support, FUEL implemented Efforts to Outcomes (ETO) software in 2010 to centralize data, guide program design, and automate reporting. ETO helped refine curriculum and metrics, supported evidence-based choices (including adopting a motivating 1:1 savings match), improved partner coordination and data quality, and supported growth to seven partners across three cities—more than 600 parents have saved $525,000+ for 700+ students and FUEL students show a 92% college persistence rate (Fall 2013); the organization is now adding ETO Engage to streamline client communications and scale further.

FUEL Education

Yiming Shuang

Senior Manager of Program Operations