Project Summary
Instil, a nonprofit relationship management platform, partnered with X-Team to rebuild its donor management system for enterprise clients. The collaboration resulted in major platform enhancements, and had a positive impact on Instil's team culture, positioning them for long-term growth.
The Client
Instil delivers cutting-edge relationship management solutions for nonprofits. Its platform empowers organizations to optimize major gift fundraising with powerful tools for relationship management, data analysis, and donor engagement. Advanced permission controls and seamless integrations ensure nonprofits can streamline operations and amplify their impact.
The Challenge
As a fast-growing startup founded in 2020, Instil faced a critical turning point: To meet the demands of enterprise-level clients, they needed to rebuild their donor management platform from the ground up. The existing system, designed for smaller organizations, lacked essential features like granular permission management, seamless integrations, and advanced reporting—key capabilities for handling the complexity of major gift fundraising.
"You’re not just replacing a single component like a heart; you’re recreating an entire system to ensure every part works seamlessly," said Chris Lavender, Instil’s senior vice president of engineering. "Re-platforming was akin to performing an entire circulatory system transplant."
As part of the re-platforming effort, Instil wanted to move their application to a relational database, a critical first step involved restructuring an entire set of application layers built on top of the database. While they planned to maintain their Python stack, they wanted to transition from RESTful APIs to GraphQL APIs to modernize and streamline the platform further.
Adding to the challenge, Instil’s engineering team was understaffed. With tight deadlines and limited resources, they urgently needed external expertise to scale their efforts and achieve ambitious goals. And they wanted to work with developers in locations aligned with U.S. time zones to be available during their team’s working hours.
The Services
Instil partnered with X-Team to scale their engineering team and modernize their platform through a structured, efficient process.
X-Team began with a detailed consultation to align technical capabilities with project goals, leveraging their extensive talent network to source developers. They brought in engineers with expertise in React, Node.js, and GraphQL who excelled in fast-paced environments.
The first placement significantly boosted team performance within days. Building on that success, X-Team added several more developers who integrated seamlessly into Instil’s workflows, ensuring rapid progress on deliverables. Eventually, Instil realized that they needed more support for this project. They returned to X-Team and hired a few more engineers. During the project’s peak, nearly half of the team working on Instil’s re-platforming consisted of X-Team engineers.
Results
Moving From Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs
X-Team developers significantly increased the sprint team’s velocity, accelerating progress on key deliverables. Over six months, X-Team’s developers were instrumental in achieving major platform enhancements tailored to enterprise-level clients.
Delivering a Positive Impact on the Culture
X-Team brought more than technical expertise—their contributions contributed to the team culture at Instil. The developers fostered teamwork and cohesion, emphasizing adaptability, ownership, and openness to new ideas.
Positioning the Team for Long-Term Growth
Beyond immediate results, X-Team’s collaboration helped Instil establish a foundation for scalability and long-term success. The re-platforming effort equipped Instil with the tools needed to handle evolving enterprise demands. Lavender emphasized the strategic value of the partnership: "X-Team is a very easy … way to get connected with validated talent that is nearshore. You build actual connections with people you know and trust, which is way more meaningful than just some faceless agency."
I would use X-Team again in a similar situation where we need to scale up a team for an indeterminate amount of time. I appreciate the way X-Team drives a sense of culture within the X-Teamers, and we benefited from that as a customer.
Senior VP of Engineering, Instil
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