Carrie Harris (CEO) and Patrice Duncan (COO) of D&E Housing and Economic Empowerment Center, Inc. are passionate—both about their callings to aid the underserved and the mPact Pro client management system. mPact Pro is a software system created by Community Ventures to simplify the complex regulations and streamline the challenging reporting requirements of HUD-approved housing counseling agencies like D&E, whose mission is to develop people and empower communities.
“We have used many different client management systems, but mPact Pro is different,” notes Duncan. “It is easy to use, and mimics social media platforms. It allows us to make each client an individual with a personality and a story—a real person, not just a number. Being a HUD-approved housing counseling agency, it allows us to easily pull our required 9902 reports and track our clients’ progress and our counselors’ workloads and daily schedules. The way mPact Pro is laid out, it is a very comprehensive, user-friendly tool. And the technical support is great—that’s always critical with a client management system.”
Community Ventures saw the need through their own housing counseling services for an intuitive platform that could consolidate and combine all the information that HUD-approved agencies are tasked with tracking. With over 25 years of experience working with HUD counselors providing training and technical assistance, Shane Darrisaw, now Community Ventures’ President of mPact Pro, came aboard to oversee the design and build of the software system.
“Certified HUD counselors input their data, appointments, follow-ups and education that clients receive, and it is all documented in mPact Pro,” explained Darrisaw. “We now have 160 plus agencies across the US that use our system. D&E was one of the first.”
“We love what we do, and without a doubt it is not just what we do—it is who we are,” stresses Duncan, who along with Harris worked together in the banking industry for years prior to founding D&E. “Carrie and I have always had a passion to serve the overlooked and underserved. We saw low-income, high-minority communities denied loans twice as much as other communities that were applying, and we wanted to bridge that gap. We knew that education was the way to do that.”
D&E Housing & Economic Empowerment Center, Inc. has offices in three southern states—GA, AL and MS—and oversees the only rural Freddie Mac Borrower Help Center of 16 total centers nationwide. More information can be found at www.depower.org.
If you are a housing counseling agency that would like more information on the mPact Pro system, or would like to schedule a demo, please visit our website at www.cvky.org/mpact-pro.
