ECM Welcomes New Business Development Manager, Greg Rideout
In times of economic uncertainty, when many of our counterparts in the tech space are making impossible decisions, we know that people will continue to need human services and ultimately social work case management. As a social venture, we aren’t beholden to the interests of shareholders and we know that human service needs will rise. It is with this in mind that we center ourselves and set our sights on new growth and expansion. We’re thrilled to announce that Greg Rideout (he/him) has joined our team as an Exponent Case Management Business Development Manager.
Greg is a very talented and knowledgeable addition to the Exponent Partners team. Greg earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in elementary education from Colby College and went on to earn a master’s degree in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis. After two years of direct services in child welfare, Greg launched what has grown into a 25-year career in nonprofit management, including the last 20 years leading youth education and workforce development programming in New York City. Greg more recently served as Chief Program Officer for both Commonpoint Queens and Seneca Family of Agencies. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Services. Greg is based in New York, NY.
Let’s all take a moment to celebrate and welcome Greg! We recently sat down with Greg to ask him some questions so that you too can get to know him better.
Q: Greg, tell us about yourself! When I began as a freshman in high school, I had the opportunity to earn a spot on the varsity cross country team who was slated to race in New York City later in the fall. I made the team and trip and came back to a small city in Vermont announcing I would move there some day. Everyone thought I was crazy, but when a professional opportunity first arose in New York early in my career, I jumped on it. I am so glad I did! I have been very honored to serve and advocate on behalf of New Yorkers seeking various social services ever since.
Q: What inspired you to get into the nonprofit space and what has sparked this most recent shift to join our team? I am the son of two public school teachers. I spent many dinner times hearing about the flaws in our service delivery systems and stories of those less fortunate. Not wanting to follow too closely in my parents’ footsteps, I chose a career in social work. Since then, I rose through the ranks to executive level positions in larger and larger organizations. I spent significant time within these leadership roles focused on program impact and wanting to make data-informed decisions around program development and funding. At this point in my career, I have a strong desire to make a broader impact on the field than one position in one agency affords. I see this opportunity at Exponent Partners as a way to assist organizations across the country and beyond to easily collect, store, share, and aggregate data for the purposes of ensuring program impact and securing sufficient funding for effective programs.
Q: You’ve been an ECM customer. Can you share your past experience working with Exponent Case Management at Commonpoint Queens? Absolutely! My experience working with Exponent Partners is that they take great care in gaining a complete understanding of the programs an organization wishes to capture in its system, both program processes and critical data points. At Commonpoint Queens, we successfully created a comprehensive, agency-wide system that accepted data from every outside, funder-mandated system avoiding any double data entry. Then, we also met the needs of programs throughout the agency that did not have their own data management systems, from memory loss programs to programs for youth with developmental disabilities to our entire adult workforce division. Exponent Partners is particularly effective in this work, as multiple people on the team have a nonprofit background and all are committed to social justice and improving peoples’ lives. Beyond the wonder of the initial build, we felt like we had a partner to support ongoing system administration, further development and customization that is a natural outgrowth of the user experience.
Q: What is your philosophy on social work case management? I am a generalist practitioner at heart. I firmly believe in the therapeutic, transformational nature of social work case management. Individuals who seek social services often have an array of needs. Because of this, I believe they deserve a comprehensive assessment and collaboratively built service plan. The case manager should not try to be the jack of all trades, but instead be a specialist in developing quality resources. The case manager should facilitate those referrals and secure the necessary consents so information can be shared by the entire team. Ideally, the client only has to tell their personal story once and everyone knows all services being provided and progress being made.
Q: What do you think human services organizations need to know about Exponent Case Management? Is your data secure? Can your employees safely and easily collect and access data whether in person or remote? Are you able to pull data across programs for funders or board meetings in just the few hours you are usually given to produce this information? How long does it take your development team, undoubtedly in collaboration with scrambling program teams, to pull the right data to answer quantitative data questions in proposals or write reports to funders? Do you guesstimate data points when speaking about agency-wide numbers in your annual report or informing individual donors as to the true cost of the various services you provide? How many hours do your program staff spend in audit preparation? These are all questions that arose for me and ones I’m sure keep you up at night. Exponent Case Management ensures data security, and provides you with a custom dashboard so the answers to those common funder and board questions are at your fingertips, updated in real time. Program Managers can have similar, customized dashboards that allow programs to be omni audit ready. Development staff will no longer need to interrupt programs from the valuable, core work of service delivery to quickly secure numbers for proposals and reports. Exponent Case Management will solve your numerous data concerns, will be adaptable to the ever-changing program and data landscape and questions, and give you a monumental return on your investment.
If you want to learn more about Exponent Case Management and how your organization can benefit from the most advanced human services platform on the market today, contact us! Greg may even be on the line.
