How to use CoPilot release notes

03/20/2020 | Comment

CoPilot release notes offer a high-level, comprehensive overview of enhancements and new features available in our latest release. We include the technical requirements for current partners to get set up as well as the processes they can follow to get started. We also offer tips and best practices to ensure their continued success.

  • We offer PDF and HTML versions of the release notes through our website.
  • These notes document current feature improvements, for a list of known issues visit the Salesforce Known Issues site or reach out to your CoPilot Partner Experience Manager (PEM).
  • Partners should use the Table of Contents to link to sections they wish to explore. No need to read this documentation front to back. Partners can discover what impacts their org the most and use the hyperlinks to capture the information they need to successfully implement the new feature within their org.
  • Partners can use this document to understand Salesforce Mandated Security Features and how prerequisites impact your orgs ability to successfully install the latest CoPilot release.
  • Partners can troubleshoot their installation process here before contacting their PEM
  • Partners should follow our recommended testing protocols included in this documentation in a partial copy sandbox to review and document internally.
  • Partners can use this document to understand Salesforce Mandated Security Features and how prerequisites impact your orgs ability to successfully install the latest CoPilot Release.
  • Current Partners can review updated fields, descriptions and help text in this document. New CoPilot partners will start with new Page Layouts for every object. Lightning record and home pages have been created for every object and every profile. Partners can use this documentation to encourage personalizations within individual instances.
  • Examine New Reports and Dashboards available as a jumping board for partners to track key performance indicators.
  • General training suggestions in this document can easily supplement the many ways organizations are already meeting their unique training needs. Partners can consider these recommendations as they plan to launch the release within their organization.
  • Your feedback matters. We know how important CoPilot is to your company’s success. We want to know what works for you and what doesn’t as well as what you would like to see in the future.

Kresge, ECMC Foundations award $1.4 million to CoPilot

09/24/2018 | Comment

AUSTIN, TEXAS – The Kresge Foundation and the ECMC Foundation today announced a joint investment in College Forward’s CoPilot platform, which will allow the college access and success nonprofit to grow the student-information system to reach upward of 1 million students from low-income communities across the nation in the coming years.

Kresge’s commitment includes a $600,000 program-related investment (PRI) loan paired with a $400,000 grant from its nationally-focused Education Program.

With this transaction, ECMC Foundation marked its first direct investment through a $400,000 PRI, bringing the total to $1.4 million in new support to College Forward.

Launched in 2014, CoPilot is a cloud-based student information system built on the Salesforce customer-relationship management platform that provides nonprofit and education partners a holistic student profile. Users can access and analyze critical student data to deliver targeted interventions that help ensure college completion for their students.
Currently, the CoPilot system supports 40 organizations reaching nearly 300,000 students; the goal of these investments is to scale it to hundreds of thousands more through expanded sales and marketing efforts, as well as to support student-facing app improvements and coaching technical assistance.

This is the largest investment to date in CoPilot and the first impact investment from national higher education funders into the platform.

“Cash-strapped nonprofits want to understand how well they are serving students, but this has too often meant having to manage crucial student data in Excel sheets and other archaic, one-size-fits-all systems, making it difficult to obtain an accurate picture of how a given student is doing,” said Rip Rapson, Kresge’s president & CEO. “Now, through CoPilot, College Forward has broken new ground in solving the technological gap, so many nonprofits face as they attempt to understand their impact on student outcomes. CoPilot holds enormous potential to extend the reach of this cost-effective data solution to many other student service providers.

Kresge’s Social Investment Practice has a $350 million commitment to impact investing through 2020 and works across the foundation’s program teams. This is its third investment with the national Education Program, which works to eliminate postsecondary equity and attainment gaps for low-income and students of color.

ECMC Foundation began making program-related investments through Education Innovation Ventures (EIV) in January 2018 and through partnerships with Employment Technology Fund and Venn Foundation. College Forward is one of ECMC Foundation’s first two direct PRIs. EIV provides flexible, risk capital to ventures with innovative and scalable solutions that increase educational and career attainment among underserved students.

“For us, this investment is about using the right tool to address a problem at the right time,” said Peter Taylor, president, ECMC Foundation. “College Forward has proven there’s a strong market for the CoPilot tool and has success stories to tell of its impact on college success nonprofits. These investments will allow College Forward to bring more users on board and to create new levels of sustainability for its future – ensuring new generations of Texans and students across the country will be well supported as they pursue a higher education degree.”

“CoPilot represents a leap forward for the college access and completion industry, providing nonprofit and education institutions a student-information application built on an advanced technological platform at a competitive price,” said Austin Buchan, the CEO of College Forward. “We’re thrilled to expand our partnerships with both Kresge and ECMC Foundations through these investments and know they mean we’ll be able to reach students who right now are making their way without the support they need.”

About ECMC Foundation

ECMC Foundation is a Los Angeles-based, nationally focused foundation whose mission is to inspire and to facilitate improvements that affect educational outcomes—especially among underserved populations—through evidence-based innovation. It is one of several affiliates under the ECMC Group enterprise based in Minneapolis. ECMC Foundation makes investments in two focus areas: College Success and Career Readiness; and uses a spectrum of funding structures, including strategic grantmaking and program-related investments, to invest in both nonprofit and for-profit ventures. Working with grantees, partners, and peers, ECMC Foundation’s vision is for all learners to unlock their fullest potential. Learn more about ECMC Foundation by visiting www.ecmcfoundation.org and ECMC Group by visiting www.ecmcgroup.org.

About The Kresge Foundation

The Kresge Foundation was founded in 1924 to promote human progress. Today, Kresge fulfills that mission by building and strengthening pathways to opportunity for low-income people in America’s cities, seeking to dismantle structural and systemic barriers to equality and justice. Using a full array of grant, loan, and other investment tools, Kresge invests more than $160 million annually to foster economic and social change. For more information visit Kresge.org.

CoPilot receives $200k social impact loan

04/18/2017 | Comment

AUSTIN, TEXAS — College Forward (now College Possible Texas), an Austin-based nonprofit aimed at increasing postsecondary success for low-income and first-generation college students, announced today that it received a social impact loan of $200,000 from six local Austin investors. The investment will support the expansion of CoPilot, a new student information system designed to support student success organizations.

With an ultimate goal of increasing success for an additional 300,000 students nationwide, the investment will be used to grow CoPilot through increased partnerships with college success organizations. Built on a cloud-based Salesforce platform, CoPilot allows educators and advisors to analyze student information in order to make timely, data-driven interventions that help keep students on the path to college success.

The investment has already allowed College Forward to expand the CoPilot team to meet growing demand, and secure contracts with ten new organizations serving a combined total of 25,000 low-income students. Over the course of four years, College Forward aims to generate dozens of new CoPilot partners and over $3 million in revenue, which will be reinvested into core programs.

“After a decade of research and evaluation CoPilot has emerged as a premier tool for college success organizations, and a successful earned income initiative for College Forward,” said College Forward CEO Austin Buchan. “We are excited to bring our efforts to scale and to leverage this innovative funding tool to help further our mission of expanding college and career success for 300,000 underserved students across the country.”

The investment is one of the first of its kind in Austin, and an example of emerging philanthropy methods that generate both financial returns and social benefits. Through the model, investors can have a meaningful and immediate impact on a local nonprofit, while creating an opportunity for capital to be reinvested in the community. In this way, a single investment can repeatedly facilitate positive social change.

Investors in the project include Dan and Lisa Graham (Notley Ventures), Clayton and Carly Christopher (CAVU Venture Partners), John Thornborrow (Austin Impact Capital), Eric Stumberg, the Aragona Family Foundation, and the Austin Community Foundation.

“Given CoPilot’s previous record of success, we were thrilled by the chance to help College Forward create a sustainable and scalable funding solution,” said Dan Graham of Notley Ventures. “We’re eager to support organizations seeking innovative funding models, and our hope is that more nonprofits start to explore impact investments as a way of amplifying their missions.”

CoPilot is already making a difference for college success organizations across the nation, with 29 partner agencies serving over 178,000 students. One success was highlighted during Austin’s 2017 SXSWedu festival, where College Forward and partner tnAchieves presented a case study of CoPilot’s impact on Tennessee’s statewide tuition-free community college initiative, Tennessee Promise.

Salesforce awards “Force for Change” grant to CoPilot

03/01/2017 | Comment

AUSTIN – MARCH 1, 2017 – College Forward (now College Possible Texas) announced today that it has received a Force for Change grant from Salesforce.org, the philanthropic arm of Salesforce, to support the development of an open-source mobile smartphone application that connects students with college resources and a network of mentors, with a primary goal of increasing graduation rates for underserved students across Texas and the nation.

As the number of college hopefuls grows year by year, so does students’ need for accurate, timely, and actionable information. The mobile app will convert College Forward’s college success curriculum and milestones — already used by the over 8,000 students currently enrolled in the organization’s programs — into a user-friendly and technology-friendly format, putting college expertise directly into the hands of students. In addition, students will be connected to near-peer mentors offering personalized advice and problem-solving assistance as they pursue their higher education goals.

The Force for Change grant will fund the design, development, and deployment of the app, which is slated to be available to the public by December 2017. “By leveraging our deep knowledge of college students’ challenges with the Salesforce platform, College Forward aims to create a game-changing solution that truly levels the playing field for underserved students,” said Austin Buchan, College Forward CEO. “With this mobile app, every student who is motivated to go to college will have access to the support they need to get there, stay there, and be successful.”

“Our goal is to help nonprofits and educational institutions better serve their communities and deliver on their mission,” said Ebony Frelix, SVP of Philanthropy & Engagement at Salesforce.org. “By supporting College Forward’s mission to empower more students to complete college we hope to accelerate change and create a better tomorrow for the next generation.”

The work builds upon the success of College Forward’s CoPilot student information system, also built on the Salesforce platform and serving over 156,000 students in 17 states and 3 countries.

College Forward was one of seven organizations to receive a Salesforce.org grant, selected from hundreds of proposals submitted from around the world.

About Salesforce.org
Salesforce.org is a nonprofit social enterprise with a mission to empower its community of stakeholders to accelerate impact in a whole new way. It impacts thousands of organizations and the millions of people they serve by delivering the world’s best nonprofit and educational technology solutions at affordable rates. It also inspires employee giving by matching their donations and driving volunteer engagement in the community. And it leverages a unique self-sustaining model to generously re-invest the revenue generated back into the community through strategic grants focused on education and workforce development.

Since 1999, Salesforce technology has powered more than 30,000 nonprofit and education institutions; Salesforce and its philanthropic entities have provided more than $137 million in grants; and Salesforce employees have logged more than 1.8 million volunteer hours globally.