Kaylee Williams Strikes a Chord with BIZ Luncheon Audience

"Two years ago, I bought a cat and a car, in that order, and I came to Des Moines and started working as a community builder" Kaylee Williams recalled. Williams is the Director of Business Development at VolunteerLocal and she told the story of how she came to be in her current position.

With understandings acquired as the day-to-day manager of one of Greater Des Moines' (DSM's) most successful tech startups, Williams shared insights that belied her mere 23 years under the questioning of Mike Colwell, Executive Director of the BIZ, as well as a large and diverse audience heavily seeded with supporters of this young energetic and well-liked local entrepreneur.

VolunteerLocal History

Developed originally by local tech guy, Brian Hemesath, as an aid for the former Des Moines Arts Festival organizer, the late Mo Dana, VolunteerLocal is a volunteer registration software platform that assists event and non-profit volunteer coordinators to manage the scheduling of, and communication with, volunteers online. With one free and two subscription-based models, the software is used by a wide range of groups from small non-profits to large-scale events across the United States and in 30 countries around the world.

Understanding the Client Base

Williams began as an intern working remotely from Iowa City before her move to Des Moines and then quickly transitioned from the role of Community Builder. The job which started out as primarily working with existing clients, grew to one of Director of Business Development, which expanded her responsibilities to also growing the client base.

Understanding the client base was her first order of business for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, the users of the free service were an outstanding list of leads for conversion to paid subscriptions. She further discovered that the faith based community represented an unexpectedly large portion of that lead list, causing her to re-evaluate the model in light of a price point that would not exceed the resources of that potential constituency. Understanding the client base would soon evolve into relationship building.

Square One DSM, an initiative of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, is formerly known as Business Innovation Zone (BIZ).