The Power of Connection
As told by Connect Cause CEO and Founder Ahmad Eied

“My name is Ahmad Eied and I’m the CEO and founder of Connect Cause. 

When I was 12 years old, I would go with my parents to Best Buy, or back then it was Circuit City if you remember those, and I would always walk around in the aisles of computers and technology. I always seemed to gravitate towards the technology section of stores like that.

Dell and Gateway were some of the big computer names and manufacturers back then and the huge monitors, the CRT monitors, and all that, but I essentially begged my parents [for one]. My parents were born in Egypt, and I was born in the United States, and they had no idea what technology was. Here I am at 12 years old asking for a computer, and computers were like $2,000 or $3,000 back then, so it was a big ask.

Long story short, I think I did a paper route, or I helped my father in the restaurant washing dishes and just helping with groceries and stuff for the restaurant, and I got the computer. I got it all set up, but back then I also had to ask for another thing. I needed a dial-up connection for the internet. That’s how I essentially got started with computers using a Dell computer with a CRT monitor and a dial-up connection. We had to share the phone line, so every time I would dial up you would hear someone on the phone or all these crazy noises, but that’s essentially the very first time I touched a computer.

What was magical [about technology] was that it was new and [you had] the opportunity to communicate with the entire world essentially. My parents were from Egypt, and I really didn’t have any friends here, so the family and the friends that I did have that I knew from my parents were overseas. So, it was a really good opportunity for me to chat with them. We would go into chat rooms, and we would email.

It started with communication, but then it turned into downloading music, burning CDs, and things that I could share with my friends when we would go on a car ride. And we would write on the top of the CDs what tracks we have and everything.

It wasn’t until years later that I finally figured out that I could actually fix these things. It all started with family, friends, and neighbors [coming to me saying], “Hey, my computer’s not working. Can you take a look?” And every single time I was able to fix it.

After school, I started realizing “Hey, maybe I can make a living out of this.” At that time, my family was in the restaurant industry. That’s all my family knows. So, I was working at a Jersey Mike’s, and one of my friends that I met from an automotive shop actually was working with businesses, for-profit businesses, and helping them with their networks, firewalls and things of that nature. So, I asked him to teach me what he knew, and he kind of took me under his wing for about six months or so. I asked him, “Hey I’m noticing that when you’re going into a business to fix their network, the customers are asking you if you can fix their computer and you don’t want to do it. Teach me how to do it and let me do it for you and I’ll give you a percentage of it.” He said, “Okay let’s try it.” He was able to make some money. I was able to make some money, and I was able to keep growing and learning.

So, I started fixing these computers and I was able to advance and turn that into a whole bunch of sets of different businesses.

Fast forward to 2008, I started my own company that focused on phone systems, and telecommunication systems, for for-profit organizations. And specifically, that technology was VoIP, Voice Over Internet Protocol. In 2008 and before, only about 15% of businesses were on this type of phone system, so I saw a really large opportunity to start this company and provide these services while also helping them.

During my tenure operating this organization, we naturally started getting nonprofit customers to the point where approximately 20% of our clientele was nonprofit. This company also provided managed services similar to what Connect Cause does now. One of the things that we noticed was every nonprofit customer at the organization we were working with had significant technology hurdles that they were facing. And unlike for-profits, they were essentially in handcuffs because they had to work within budgets. There were just so many challenges, and we were unable to really provide them with the services that we knew they needed, and they knew they needed as well.

Once I identified the gap that nonprofits were facing with the technology challenges, I decided to sell that company at the end of 2018, and my vision was to bridge that gap for these nonprofits. So, in 2018, when I sold that organization, I had the idea and the vision, but I needed to make sure and test the market to make sure that my idea wasn’t crazy. So, what I did was I conducted a focus group with about a dozen nonprofit leaders in the community back then that I knew of. And we just asked them a whole bunch of questions: What does a dream technology provider look like to you? What are the challenges? What are the gaps that you’re currently facing? And I took all of that feedback to attempt a way to overcome those challenges and that’s essentially how Connect Cause was founded.

In 2018, I decided to sell [my company] because I wanted to give back to the community. I had the opportunity to retire in 2018, and I did for two or three months, but I wanted to give back, and I didn’t want to just give back to the community by supporting only one organization.

I knew what I was good at doing, and I knew that there was a gap in the market that needed these types of services. So, the way I was able to give back was to assist these nonprofits and our local communities by providing them with affordable technology services. We launched Connect Cause to provide affordable technology services to nonprofits. What Connect Cause does essentially, is we go into an organization, we send an engineer and our client success manager on-site to meet them, talk to them, and understand their pain points from a user perspective, but we also look at the network and see what’s needed to keep them in the 21st century.

Now, most of the time when we go into an organization, there’s going to be network infrastructure that we have to put in place that they either can’t afford, they don’t want to, or they don’t understand why they need it. So, we, as a managed service provider, know that we want to make sure at least from the top of the network that there are no issues with their security. We want to make sure that all users are protected: there are no viruses on the computer, and they’re able to connect securely to their infrastructure. We deliver that in the form of a donation. We will go in and provide an enterprise-grade firewall at no charge to them. We will donate it, install it, and manage it. Through that focus group that we conducted and through continual research that we conduct with nonprofits, we knew that nonprofits always seem to have an issue with their wireless networks. A lot of them are connecting via wireless, so we also donate the wireless infrastructure to them as well.

An engagement with Connect Cause looks like, “Hey, off the bat, you’re getting an enterprise-grade network security device, essentially a brand-new wireless network, all included in your services. But we top that off by having some differentiators and by ensuring that we can deliver our services in an unlimited manner to them.

We’ve heard stories of staff coming in two hours early before their shift just to boot their computer because it takes so long, and they want the computer to be on before their shift begins. And then I asked why don’t you just get it fixed? You have a technology provider and the answer most of the time is, well, we’re going to get billed for it. They nickel and dime us. They’ll put a band-aid over it. So, the way we deliver our services is in an unlimited fashion, and it holds us accountable. Because if we put a band-aid in place, we have to continuously add more labor to fix the band-aid where holding us accountable allows us to go in and put the right solution in place the first time. Therefore, it allows us to spend less labor dollars to manage the network because it’s an unlimited type of agreement.

It doesn’t matter if an organization calls us a thousand times a month or we go on-site 200 times a month, the amount billed per month will remain the same. This allows them to stay ahead of the technology curve while maintaining users’ machines.

When we start with a client, we listen to what they say. We start by asking the staff, “Hey, what are some of the pain points you have?” and we sit down with them, we listen, we document these challenges that they’re facing, and that engineer and/or client success manager will bring that back to our team. We’ll then talk amongst ourselves and try to provide solutions, long-term solutions, to fix these challenges that they’re currently facing.

Sometimes some of the initial solutions we’ll provide are donated for free so that they’re able to succeed. And then as they move forward, we can find the right solutions to help them be successful, efficient, and effective as they can. And then as our partnership progresses forward, we’ll figure out other types of long-term solutions that fit their needs.

When we go into a nonprofit, we identify the challenges that they face, but we’re also looking at the resources and tech stack that they are currently using. For example, we noticed a big gap in the database system for nonprofits. We’ve noticed that their data, constituent data, is sort of an Excel spreadsheet. There’s no security on it. It can get lost. It can get corrupted. There’s no way to pull analytics from it. When we were able to identify that gap, we then spent the time and resources and we developed something called Connect Cause Engage. This is a free CRM for any type of nonprofit. You don’t have to be a customer of ours, we just want to give you the resources and tools you need to protect your constituent data, to be able to forecast budgets for the following year, and all the other types of awesome reporting that comes with a CRM.

We consistently attempt to find these challenges and gaps in the market by asking our current nonprofit customers, “Hey, if there was something that would be helpful to you, regardless of price, what would that be?” We take all that feedback, and if we are able to tick the box on multiple nonprofits saying the same exact thing, then our team is going to take that information and develop something that’s going to be put in front of nonprofits at no additional fees. We just want to continue enhancing our service offering besides just providing technology services, and that can come in the form of a donated and free CRM for nonprofits. It includes things such as an online training system where nonprofits can come, pick the different types of software that they use on a daily basis, and go through training, on how to ask questions in the system, but also get a certificate of accomplishment when they’re done. They can take their certificate, and show it to their peers, which then typically motivates everyone else to get on the system, learn and get training. When this happens, we start seeing a shift within that particular nonprofit of them embracing technology instead of using it against them.

Nobody wants to deal with a broken computer or a broken piece of software. It’s the most frustrating thing you can ever face. But when you’re able to have an IT provider, a partner such as Connect Cause, come in and understand the challenges of exclusively working with nonprofits, it allows us to help that nonprofit grow. In turn, that makes an impact on our local community. Moving on to the future, our nonprofit clients are letting us know what direction to go.

I’ve been in the technology sector for years, and this is the first time I’ve ever been able to work with an organization and get a sense of accomplishment over just resolving an issue. There’s just something about knowing that our staff is contributing to making an impact in the community with this wonderful work that nonprofits do, and for us and our staff to know that we are a part of that by advancing their technology and helping them with their computers and providing ongoing support and training on applications they use on a daily basis just gives us a sense of accomplishment that I don’t feel you can get anywhere else.

We love seeing the nonprofits we partner with multiply their impact. When we’re able to see nonprofits quadruple their impact because of the tools and technology that we provide them. There is no greater feeling. That’s all we want to do is help our local nonprofits.”

Ahmad Eied
Connect Cause Founder and CEO

— www.ConnectCause.com —