How a tiny NGO team used Make to grow into a high-impact global network

• Industry: Nonprofit & Community Services

• Use cases: Finance, operations, data management

• Country: Global

• Company size: 2-10

High Impact Athletes (HIA) is a nonprofit that helps professional athletes use their platform to do good. They work with over 230 athletes across 51 sports in 36 countries, connecting them with evidence-backed charities in global health, climate, and animal welfare to ensure each donation makes the biggest difference possible. 

As a nonprofit with limited funds and a lean team, HIA faced a challenge: manual processes were too slow to keep up with its growth, and it needed to connect onboarding, finance, CRM, and reporting systems without the budget for enterprise software. Make became their solution, letting them automate operations from the ground up and scale quickly.

In 2024, HIA also launched Race for Impact – a fundraising platform integrated with HYROX, the fastest-growing fitness race on the planet. Through Race for Impact, athletes choose from five high-impact cause areas – Global Health, Mental Health, Climate Solutions, Women's Empowerment, and Animal Welfare. The supporting charities are identified by independent evaluators as delivering the most impact per dollar. Once athletes choose their charity, they raise money through their network and compete for a better world. 

Using Make, HIA can now process thousands of Race for Impact participant registrations across 50+ global events, automatically creating fundraising profiles and tracking donations at scale. Kevin Rassool, the charity’s Tech Lead, shares how Make became the foundation of their operations, enabling a lean team to run a global organization like clockwork.

“Founded by Olympic athletes who believe performance and purpose go hand in hand, we’re on a mission to improve how the world gives back. We believe that to perform at your peak, everything you do should be optimised — and giving should be no different.”

Kevin Rassool, Tech Lead, High Impact Athletes

The challenges

As a small nonprofit with limited funds and just a handful of key team members, HIA needed a way to build reliable workflows.

Key challenges included:

• Manual processes were too slow and frustrating, especially after early growth

• Needed to connect onboarding, finance, CRM, and reporting

• Needed a solution flexible enough to support rapid growth

“We were starting out as a tiny not-for-profit with basically zero budget, and Make allowed us to get off the ground and scale rapidly.”

Kevin Rassool, Tech Lead, High Impact Athletes

The solution

HIA’s team used Make to automate their operations from the ground up.

Key automations include:

• Athlete onboarding: Athletes submit a quote and photo. With just one click, Make triggers a string of automations: automatically add the athlete to the website, log them in the CRM, arrange a merch delivery, and book a welcome meeting.

• Finance and accounting: Make connects HIA’s financial tools and automates internal reporting

• CRM: Donor data and athlete activity are synced across systems for complete visibility

• Impact communications: Donors are updated automatically with personalized messaging

• Scenario development: Make's reusable blueprint features let High Impact Athletes quickly build new workflows. Something other tools couldn't do, especially with AI.

• Big picture visibility: Using Make Grid, the team monitors all their automations in one place and can quickly spot issues

• Race for Impact: Managing thousands of participant registrations from 50+ global events, connecting athletes with charities identified by independent evaluators as delivering the most impact per dollar, with automated fundraising profile creation and donation tracking.

“With other tools, we couldn’t export blueprints and put them into AI tools. That was really frustrating. Since Make allows copying and pasting and exporting of your flows, it’s made our workflow of building new automations 10 times faster.”

Kevin Rassool, Tech Lead, High Impact Athletes

The results

Make is now the operational engine behind HIA’s global growth. The team runs a high-impact organization much more efficiently than before.

It has been able to stay lean and focus on its mission without being bogged down by manual work. 

Key results include:

• 50+ business processes automated (and counting!)

• 10× faster automation builds by exporting and reusing Make blueprints 

• 5,000+ participants onboarded via Race for Impact, HIA’s mass-participation fundraising program.

• One-click onboarding for new athletes

• Automated communications, CRM updates, and financial reporting

• Full visibility of all automations using Make Grid

"Make is the backbone of how we scale impact without adding headcount. The platform connects athletes globally with charities identified by independent evaluators as delivering exceptional impact per dollar.”

Kevin Rassool, Tech Lead, High Impact Athletes

How Make helps HIA stay on track

Make has been more than a tool for HIA; it’s the backbone of their entire operation. With limited resources, they needed a platform that was powerful, flexible, and simple enough for anyone on the team to build with.

Why Make was the right fit:

• Easier debugging

• A smooth way to stay on top of processes 

• Better understanding of how things work together

• Flexible enough to connect tools across the entire organization

• Exportable blueprints helped speed up new automations