Case Study: The Contingent achieves expanded foster-care reach and faster foster-parent recruitment with Microsoft Power BI

The Contingent serves more families in Oregon’s foster care system with Dynamics 365

The Contingent, a small Oregon nonprofit that mobilizes volunteers and recruits foster families for the state’s Department of Human Services, struggled with fragmented, manual data that made it hard to track supporter journeys and refer ready foster parents. To solve this, the organization built a connected CRM and analytics platform using Microsoft technologies—including Dynamics 365, Azure, the Common Data Model—and Microsoft Power BI to collect, clean, and visualize supporter data.

Using Dynamics 365 as a single-truth CRM with Microsoft Power BI dashboards and integrations built with partner Wipfli, The Contingent achieved measurable gains: a 10-fold expansion of its initiative, My NeighbOR growing seven times larger, the ability to handle nearly double the pandemic-era inquiries, and faster conversion from interest to readiness (from about three years down to roughly 90 days for many people). The platform also enabled targeted ZIP-code marketing, de‑duplication of contacts, real-time reporting, management of a $62 million grant, and helped recruit more than 860 certified foster families while improving referrals to DHS.

The Contingent

Peter Kim

Director of Technology, Data, and Evaluation