Brave Step is a nonprofit in Concord, North Carolina that works with adult survivors of sexual violence. Survivors who reach out are matched with individual therapists, and many also join group programs: psychoeducation, coping skills, breathwork, and group therapy. A second program, Loved Ones, supports the partners and family members close to a survivor. Most programming runs virtually, with in-person events during the year.
The organization operates on about $380,000 a year, so coordination falls mostly to one person. Morgan Johnson, Brave Step’s Program Navigator, handles intake, assessments, client communication, and reporting, with help from interns.
Morgan has spent her career in case management systems. Before Brave Step, she did DSS and immigration casework in state and federal government software. “They’re ugly. They’re hard. They’re complicated. Most of the links don’t work. Customer service is unresponsive.”
In spring 2025, Brave Step went looking for one system that could handle individual care planning, group programming, assessments, and reporting together. They chose Sumac Case Management and went live that summer after a guided implementation. Since then, Morgan has been using Sumac’s universal import to keep bringing ten years of historical client records into the system. The adult survivor program is fully in Sumac now. The Loved Ones program follows next fiscal year, at which point the Monday.com boards and spreadsheets that held pieces of the operation can be retired.
When Morgan sat down with our product team in April to talk about how it was going, she said: “I’m just absolutely flabbergasted, excited, I have all these different words I can use for it. So thank you so much for being so customizable and working with us.”
Intake
Brave Step’s application form is linked from its website and printed as QR codes on business cards and pamphlets. When someone applies, Sumac creates the client record and emails Morgan.
“I get a notification through my email, which I love with Sumac, when a new application has come in. It’s directly linked with our website, with our QR codes and our business cards, and our little pamphlets.”
Assessments
Brave Step measures outcomes over a long horizon. Clients are assessed at baseline and then repeatedly after their programs end, with follow-ups continuing for two years.
“That’s where we can house all of our assessments, baseline all the way up to two years after being clients with us. We do long-term testing and assessment. We want that long-term data. I’m a data person.”
Interns send the assessments from Sumac’s web portal, which keeps that work off Morgan’s desk. “It’s like three clicks of a button, and you send that assessment, and you can have a little message in it, so it’s very easy for them to navigate.”
Each staff login has its own dashboard, so the stripped-down contact views Morgan prefers don’t change what anyone else sees. Hers is purple, because purple is her favorite color.
Support
Early on, Morgan reported an accessibility bug: an assessment button was rendering as solid black, which made it unusable for clients with visual impairments. It was fixed the same day, and the support team asked which colors she wanted the buttons to be. They now match Brave Step’s branding.
“Within 24 hours, not even 24 hours, actually within the same day, you guys fixed it. And you were so intentional with even my correspondence. ‘Well, what color do you want the buttons to be?’”
She reads the release notes when updates ship, and writes in when she notices something.
Results
When Brave Step’s advisory board asks about program attendance, the answer used to take weeks of hand-compiled spreadsheet work. “Now I can say yes, I can get you a report in 24 to 48 hours.”
The time Morgan used to spend on manual tracking now goes to clients. “That really does make a difference in the hours that I spend, and hours I can spend with clients as well. So it does make a difference what you guys are doing. All the little things.”
