Shining Light in Darkness is a nonprofit in Durham, North Carolina that works with survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and human trafficking. Flo DeVaul-Dudley founded it in 2014 after her own experience of abuse. Her husband, ED Dudley, co-founded it with her and is now co-executive director. The staff is small and works alongside volunteers, and it concentrates on survivors who face the steepest barriers to safety and recovery. Its work is paid for in part by state and federal grants, among them awards from the North Carolina Governor’s Crime Commission and the North Carolina Division for Women and Youth.
Most of that work runs through the C.R.I.S.I.S. program, short for Crisis Response and Integrated Services for Immediate Support. A survivor can reach the organization through a hotline that runs 24 hours a day, through a text line, or in person. However they arrive, staff carry out a trauma-informed danger and safety assessment first, then help them work through housing, medical care, legal options, and therapy. A second program trains healthcare providers, law enforcement officers, and community groups to recognize and respond to abuse.
Work like that produces a long record: intake details, safety assessments, referrals from partner agencies, and case notes that build up over months. In late 2025 a technology grant gave the organization the means to put all of it on one system. Consultants from Accenture, who were working with Shining Light in Darkness through a corporate citizenship program, ran the evaluation.
Selection
The consultants compared the available case management products against what the organization actually needed, what it could afford, and how hard each one would be for a small team to learn. Sumac came out ahead on price and on what it could grow into. Shining Light in Darkness signed in December 2025 and held its kickoff at the end of that month. Configuration started early in 2026. The organization runs Sumac Case Management along with unlimited web forms, and it added user seats in the spring as more staff came onto the system.
[QUOTE PLACEHOLDER — ED Dudley, on why Sumac was selected over the other options the consultants reviewed — to be sourced from the call recording and approved]
Referrals
A large share of the caseload arrives from other agencies rather than from survivors directly. The local police department, the district attorney’s office, social services, and other community partners all send referrals, and they do it through a link that puts each one into Sumac.
Not every referral carries the same urgency. Judith, the organization’s customer success manager at Sumac, reworked how referrals come in so that the high-priority ones are identified quickly.
[QUOTE PLACEHOLDER — ED Dudley, on how partner referrals reach the team now — to be sourced from the call recording and approved]
Support
When ED Dudley talks about what has gone well, he talks about Judith. She does not wait to be asked. She suggests configuration changes she thinks will suit the way the team works, and she turns requests around quickly. She has also worked through several questions about how to record particular kinds of information, including how communications with a survivor sit alongside the rest of a case file. For an organization with no technology staff of its own, that covers work an internal administrator would otherwise be hired to do.
[QUOTE PLACEHOLDER — ED Dudley, on Judith’s support — to be sourced from the call recording and approved]
Implementation
The system is not finished. Coordinating implementation sessions around a team that answers a crisis line at any hour has made the pace uneven, and the organization is still building out parts of its configuration. The parts that are running are in daily use, and referrals from partner agencies now arrive in one place.
Much of the organization’s time is spent outside the office, at community tabling events and in meetings with law enforcement and social service partners, and it wants the system to follow staff into that work. ED Dudley has asked that Ezza Alam, the director of crisis services, and the staff who use Sumac every day be included in those conversations as the configuration continues.
