Behind the scenes at JCC Boulder and JCC Denver

I’ve spent the last decade working as a B2B marketing director, mostly in the tech and agency worlds. I’m used to launching campaigns, refining brand voice, and translating products into positioning decks and measurable outcomes. So when I joined OpenTent at the start of the year, I planned to do more of the same; help package up our Salesforce consulting services in a way that speaks to nonprofit and community orgs.

But spending last week in Colorado with two of our clients changed my understanding of the work we do completely.

We partnered with the team at Zander Media to create a short documentary about OpenTent’s long-time relationships with two JCCs: one in Boulder and one in Denver. Sam, our CEO, had always wanted to bring our work to life through stories, not just stats or a standard slide deck. So we set out to capture, through film, not just what we do but how we do it: what makes our work feel different, and what it looks like to truly partner with an organization rather than consult from a distance.

Stepping into something I hadn’t seen before

I grew up going to church every Sunday, but I’m not very religious anymore. I had never stepped foot inside a Jewish Community Center before this trip, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.
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The Boulder JCC is one of the most beautiful community campuses I’ve ever seen. There are beautiful gardens lining the campus, goats, chickens, and people strolling through the courtyard. Summer camp was in full swing. There were toddlers being dropped off, a women’s group playing mahjong, new moms arriving with their babies for a parenting group session, and an art studio buzzing with activity. The campus felt so vibrant and so full of life.
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Denver had a similar rhythm. We walked in and immediately passed the beautiful outdoor swimming pool. Families were arriving, kids were running to programs, staff were welcoming people in. We turned a corner and saw a wall filled with photographs tracing the center’s history back to the 1920s. There was this quiet reverence in the space that made me pause. I could feel the longevity and importance of what these places have held over time.

What I kept thinking was: these JCCs hold people. They hold them across generations. They hold them through joy, transition, and crisis. Especially now, in a predominantly remote-working world where so many of us are disconnected, these spaces are doing something powerful. They’re giving people a space to gather and connect.

I saw our work more clearly than ever

Before this trip, I could speak to OpenTent’s offerings confidently. I could tell you we help implement and optimize Salesforce for nonprofits. That we’ve built a helpful integration between Amilia and Salesforce. That we staff and support fractional Salesforce admins. I know who our ideal customers are and I can translate technical offerings into marketing copy.

But being on the ground, watching our team, our work, and our relationships in motion, changed the way I understood what we actually do. We’re helping staff stop managing fifteen disconnected systems and endless spreadsheets. We’re giving them breathing room. We’re making the kind of quick, clear decision-making that community work requires actually possible.

I spent time with Shaun, one of our fractional Salesforce admins. He splits his time between JCC Boulder and JCC Denver, two days a week at each, with one day spent in professional development and support with OpenTent. I watched him move between high-level conversations and in-the-weeds problem solving. He’s steady. Embedded. Trusted. He’s not a contractor. He’s a true member of their teams.

I got to meet Cynthia, a true force and passionate leader at the Boulder JCC. She shared a story of what it was like for them to spring into action when the Marshall Fire happened in Boulder. When more than 1,000 homes were destroyed in the surrounding community. Her team needed to act quickly. They used Salesforce to pull a list by zip code and neighborhood. They called everyone they could think of. They added custom fields on the fly. They tracked who had been evacuated and who needed support. There was no scramble. No fragmentation. Just clarity and action.

That story stayed with me. Because the work we do at OpenTent didn’t just make that response possible. It made it human. Staff weren’t wasting precious hours tracking down contact lists or second-guessing data. They could show up for their community right when they were needed most.

What it actually means to partner

At both JCCs, the phrase came up more than once: “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.”
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 It wasn’t said as a joke. It was said with pride and the kind of clarity that only comes from deep alignment between tools, teams, and the way people actually work. What stood out most was how often people described OpenTent as part of their staff. Not a vendor. Not a consulting firm. Real people they trust and like working with.
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I heard, more than once, that OpenTent meetings are the best meetings of the day and week. And I believe it. I saw the laughter. The ease. The shared language. There’s a lightness to our work that makes it not just effective, but actually joyful. And in the world of nonprofit tech, joyful is not always a word that comes up.

That kind of trust doesn’t happen because we offer the right package or tool. It happens because we stick around. Because we listen. Because we show up even when things are messy. Because we help people make sense of what they’ve built and decide what they want to do next.

Why this story matters

As a marketer, I’ve written plenty of case studies. But this wasn’t a typical gathering of behind the scenes footage to build a case study. This was a chance to see up close the effect of thoughtful systems and steady relationships inside organizations that are doing important, complicated, deeply human work.
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Our work isn’t just about making Salesforce run better. It’s about helping people do their jobs without drowning in clunky tools and disconnected data. It’s about giving teams a little more clarity. A little more time. A little more space to think bigger. We’re not just easing the technical load. We’re helping people feel more confident, more organized, and more energized to lead.
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To any JCC or community org reading this

If your systems feel stretched. If your team is doing the best they can with tools that don’t quite work. If you’re trying to serve a community while holding everything together behind the scenes, we understand that reality. We’ve walked alongside other teams who were in the exact same place. And we’d love to talk about what might be possible.

In the meantime, stay tuned for our two upcoming documentaries.