The Entertainment Industry College Outreach Program (EICOP) helps students, many from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, launch careers in entertainment. They support students year-round with professional development programming, networking opportunities, and industry education to help students learn more about the entertainment industry. EICOP also helps students find internships across film, television, sports, and media.
Behind the scenes, managing thousands of student interactions, partner relationships, donor communications, and program events required a large amount of coordination. As EICOP’s mission grew, their Google Sheets couldn’t keep up with their growing data needs.
Before adopting Airtable with the help of Claribase, EICOP’s project manager, Holly May remarked:
“Prior to Airtable we actually had everything strewn across 1000 Google Sheets. We were having to consolidate things. One of the things that we live and die by is data.”
In this case study, we explore how Claribase helped EICOP develop a centralized database to streamline their workflows, resulting in less time managing data and more time delivering meaningful support to the next generation of entertainment industry talent.
Outgrowing a Spreadsheet-Based Workflow
Before Airtable, EICOP’s data lived across countless spreadsheets, making it difficult to consolidate information.
Student applications, partner information, event attendance records, donor contacts, and grant reporting data were all maintained separately in several spreadsheets. Team members often worked from different versions of the same information. This created inefficiencies and more errors.
The challenge for the team became obvious when it came time to report outcomes to grant providers.
“We were aggregating information from a multitude of tables and praying that it was correct.”
EICOP relies heavily on data-driven reporting and stakeholder engagement. But maintaining accurate information was becoming more difficult. There was also no streamlined system for managing contacts. This meant several team members were working off their own spreadsheets to track contacts, creating duplicate work.
The team knew they needed more than spreadsheets. They needed a centralized system that could track projects, serve as a CRM, and track their data.
Finding a Platform That Could Grow With the Organization
“At first, Airtable was really just a glorified Excel sheet for us.”
The team started to play around with Airtable in the spring of 2025. They could see the potential beyond it just being a glorified version of Excel.
“We needed a database to track our engagement of students, we needed a database to track our engagement with partners and we needed a database to track our engagement with donors…we needed to track schools too.”
Although they recognized the platform’s potential, they knew they needed a partner to design a fully connected system that could support their long-term goals.
That’s when they began searching for an Airtable implementation partner.
Creating a Single Source of Truth
When EICOP partnered with Claribase in the fall of 2025, the original goal was straightforward: create a database to track engagement with students, track engagement with partners, and track engagement with donors.
Halfway through the building process, EICOP realized they needed to track schools as well. Claribase was able to pivot and incorporate the new changes into the development process.
Rather than building isolated tools, Claribase worked closely with the EICOP team to create a connected ecosystem where information flows seamlessly between departments and processes.
What started as a database evolved into the operational backbone of the organization.
Growing Internal Airtable Expertise
One of the most valuable outcomes of the project wasn’t just the system itself; it was the knowledge the EICOP team gained along the way.
For Holly May, who manages both student and partner engagement while overseeing significant portions of EICOP’s data operations, the project became an opportunity to deepen her Airtable expertise.
“I actually saw my own growth there. So I would say I was definitely probably a 2 because I was willing to go in and poke around. But now…I’m definitely like seven and a half, almost an eight now [out of ten].”
By observing how Claribase structured databases, relationships, and automations, Holly began building her own solutions for program-specific workflows.
“Watching you guys build things, seeing what was possible…I was able to learn a lot about Airtable through that.”
Today, she continues creating custom automations and interfaces that improve efficiency across the organization knowing the Claribase team is an email away if she needs backup.
Using Automation to Improve Student Support
One of EICOP’s highest priorities is ensuring students receive support throughout their internship experiences.
Previously, monitoring student feedback for internships required manual review and follow-up, which meant important concerns could be overlooked.
Using Airtable automations and the knowledge gained from the Claribase team, Holly created a system that automatically alerts staff when students report low internship satisfaction scores during their weekly Thursday check-ins.
When a student submits a concerning rating below 5 stars, the appropriate Resident Assistant (RA) gets an automated Airtable notification with relevant context. This allows the RA to intervene quickly to support the student. These automations in Airtable have streamlined communications.
Cleaner Data, Better Communication, Stronger Reporting
Instead of maintaining countless mailing lists segmented by city or program, the team can now specifically identify contacts and students based on data already stored within Airtable using filters. Whether that’s sending emails to the group in LA, New York, Atlanta, or a combination of them, Airtable makes the process much simpler.
The result is faster communication, fewer administrative tasks, fewer emails, and better visibility into who the students are.
Since implementing the new system with Claribase, EICOP has dramatically improved how it tracks information and communicates with students and partners.
Data that once lived across multiple spreadsheets is now centralized and connected. The team can now quickly access information without manually reconciling multiple sources.
“It’s cleaned up things so much for us…Everything just flows so seamlessly together.”
The organization has also improved their email deliverability by leveraging Airtable automations connected to Outlook rather than relying on bulk email platforms that frequently trigger spam filters.
More importantly, every touchpoint, whether with students, partners, schools, or donors, can now be tracked and analyzed in one place.
Collaboration with Claribase
For EICOP, selecting Claribase ultimately came down to experience and partnership.
During the evaluation process, Claribase stood out because of its work with nonprofit organizations, educational programs, and relationship-driven operations.
“Nobody else was even close.”
Throughout the project, the Claribase team worked collaboratively with EICOP, treating every requirement as a conversation rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all solution.
“Everything was a conversation. You never told us what we were doing. Everything was back and forth…we had some really weird requests and you listened and made them happen…not to sound hokey, but it was a pleasure.”
The result was a system Claribase tailored specifically to EICOP’s workflows rather than a generic template.
“And we definitely felt like we had a voice. We had to say that it was customized for us. This was not a template you guys had sitting on a shelf that you just put our information in. We can tell that it was custom for our program and our needs.”
Turning Data Into a Strategic Asset
The impact of the project became especially clear when EICOP’s grant writer was introduced to the new system.
For someone accustomed to gathering and organizing reporting data manually, the centralized database and analytics dashboards were transformative. Showing their grant writer what their Airtable system could do, Holly recalls her reaction:
“Her eyes just kept getting bigger and bigger because she was like, this is the coolest thing. This is so easy.”
Instead of searching through multiple sources for grant reporting, the team can now access information through customized interfaces and dashboards. As Holly May shared:
“It was like showing off my new car. Like, look what it can do.”
The system has become more than a database; it has become a strategic asset that helps EICOP make better decisions, secure funding, and demonstrate their impact.
Key Outcomes
- Claribase helped EICOP consolidate a thousand Google Sheets into a single, connected Airtable database, giving the team one reliable source of truth with room to scale their mission.
- EICOP was able to greatly simplify grant reporting and data accuracy. This has resulted in making reporting faster, more accurate, and less stressful.
- The EICOP team can now give proactive support and intervene more quickly when students report low internship satisfaction through automated notifications via Airtable.
- Claribase helped EICOP improve communications and email delivery by integrating Airtable with Outlook. This allows the team to send targeted emails based on student and partner data with improved deliverability.
- The EICOP team gained valuable Airtable expertise through watching the implementation process with Claribase. This increased their confidence to build their own automations, interfaces, and workflow improvements without relying on outside support.
- EICOP’s Airtable system has become a strategic asset for decision-making and funding. Their customized dashboards and interfaces help EICOP better demonstrate their impact, inform strategic decisions, and strengthen their grant and donor relationships.
Why Every Organization Should Explore Airtable
Although EICOP’s use case centers around student engagement and nonprofit operations, Holly believes the platform’s flexibility extends far beyond those industries.
“I can’t think of a single job that couldn’t use it.”
Whether you are managing donor relationships, HR processes, event logistics, inventory tracking, customer relationships, or project management, Airtable’s combination of databases, automations, and interfaces creates opportunities to streamline work across nearly any organization.
For those considering the platform, her advice is simple:
“Just get in there and poke around.”
If you’re ready to streamline your operations and get more value from your data, we’d love to help. Book a discovery call with Claribase to discuss your goals and explore how a custom Airtable solution can support your organization.