About Rosie’s House
Rosie’s House is a nonprofit music academy providing music education and holistic support to children and families across the Phoenix metro area, with all programs and services offered at no cost. Founded in 1996 by Rosie Schurz, the organization was built on the belief that financial circumstances should never prevent a child from experiencing music.
Today, that mission has grown significantly. Rosie’s House provides music education for children from infancy through grade 12, with programming that includes Early Childhood, Afterschool, and Summer music programs. Students can explore a wide range of instruments and musical disciplines, including piano, strings, winds, voice, guitar, percussion, digital music, and mariachi.
What began with a relatively small group of students has grown into an organization serving nearly 1,000 learners throughout its program year, supported by 20 professional musicians and educators.
Marvin Scott, Chief Program Officer at Rosie’s House, has been part of that growth for 18 years, first as a saxophone teacher and later in leadership roles. Today, he helps oversee the programs and systems that allow the organization to deliver music education at this scale.
The Challenge
Running a Music Academy on a CRM
Before DreamClass, Rosie’s House relied primarily on Salesforce to manage student and family records, classes, and other operational information. Before Salesforce, much of that work had been managed through spreadsheets.
Salesforce represented an important step forward for the organization and provided a powerful system for managing information. But as Rosie’s House grew, its limitations became increasingly apparent. Salesforce was designed as a CRM, not specifically for education. Which meant the team frequently had to adapt the platform and create workarounds for processes that are fundamental to running an educational organization.
As Marvin explained during our conversation, Rosie’s House also occupies a unique space. It operates a large educational program with students, teachers, classes, schedules, and attendance. But it isn’t structured like a traditional K–12 school. That made finding the right system particularly challenging.
Two areas became especially difficult to manage: attendance and class scheduling.
Accurate attendance data is essential for Rosie’s House to monitor student participation, evaluate program engagement, and meet program reporting and funding requirements.
As Marvin put it:
“Attendance, like you said, it’s everything.”
For an organization serving hundreds of students across different programs, attendance couldn’t simply be another workaround inside a general-purpose CRM. Rosie’s House needed a system designed around how educational organizations actually operate.
Finding a System That Fit a Different Kind of School
Rosie’s House began looking for a platform that could bridge the gap between a traditional school management system and the unique way a nonprofit music academy operates.
Working with an external partner, the team evaluated multiple platforms against several core requirements. They needed stronger attendance management, flexible class scheduling, teacher access, and better communication with families. At the same time, the system had to fit within the organization’s available budget.
DreamClass stood out because it could support those core educational workflows without requiring Rosie’s House to operate like a traditional school.
Reflecting on the decision, Marvin explained that DreamClass ultimately addressed the areas that mattered most:
“It met all the needs.”
For Rosie’s House, that meant having an education-focused platform capable of supporting its unique mix of classes, programs, instructors, students, and families while remaining flexible enough to fit the way the organization already worked.
Making Attendance and Scheduling Easier to Manage
Attendance was one of the main reasons Rosie’s House started searching for a new system. And it has remained one of the areas where DreamClass has had the greatest impact.
Instead of adapting a CRM to record educational participation, the team can manage attendance within a system designed around students and classes. That gives administrators a clearer understanding of participation across the academy’s different programs. And makes attendance information easier to manage as part of everyday operations.
Class scheduling was another major requirement. With hundreds of students participating across early childhood, after-school, and summer programs, Rosie’s House needed a system capable of handling a structure that doesn’t look exactly like a traditional school timetable.
For Marvin, these improvements have delivered what the organization originally set out to achieve. When asked which areas had produced the strongest results, he returned to the same two priorities that drove the original search: attendance and communication.
“Our efficiency in operations has increased tremendously with regards to attendance.”
Creating Better Communication With Families
Communication has become another major part of how Rosie’s House uses DreamClass.
For Marvin, one of the biggest improvements is having multiple ways to reach families through the same ecosystem. Parents can access information through the mobile app, while communications can also reach them through email and text.
Offering multiple communication options helps Rosie’s House make important program information more accessible to families. These tools support timely communication about classes, schedules, and other relevant updates.
During our conversation, Marvin described this as a significant step forward for the organization:
“We have three places of contact for communication.”
For a nonprofit serving nearly 1,000 students throughout the year, having those communication channels connected to the same student management system has helped Rosie’s House strengthen one of the areas it considered essential from the beginning.
Adapting DreamClass to Rosie’s House
Introducing a new system across an organization of this size required more than simply importing data and switching platforms.
Rosie’s House began working with DreamClass before the start of its school year, giving the team time to configure the system and make adjustments before launching it with staff. Five primary users and one power user worked with the platform, documenting questions and identifying areas that needed to be adapted to the academy’s workflows.
For Marvin, the support during that process became an important part of the experience. He highlighted the ability to communicate directly with the DreamClass team, provide feedback, and work through changes as the organization became more familiar with the platform.
Rather than expecting Rosie’s House to fit into a predefined structure, the implementation became an ongoing process of adapting DreamClass around the academy’s requirements.
Looking back on the experience, Marvin described the onboarding as smooth and emphasized that the team’s willingness to listen and make adjustments had been a major part of its success.
Discovering New Ways to Support Music Education
As Rosie’s House moves further into its second year with DreamClass, the organization is beginning to explore features beyond the original reasons it adopted the platform.
The team is looking more closely at notes, for example, which can be used internally or shared with selected audiences depending on the situation. Teachers have also begun experimenting with assignments in ways that make sense specifically for music education.
Instead of a traditional homework worksheet, a teacher might upload a musical recording or resource for a student to listen to and practice at home. This allows DreamClass to become part of the learning experience rather than functioning solely as an administrative database.
Rosie’s House is also exploring forms as a potential way to streamline how information is collected from families, creating opportunities to bring even more of its workflows into the same system over time.
Building Toward a More Connected Future
Rosie’s House continues to grow, and so do its expectations for the technology supporting its programs.
One of the organization’s next goals is to further connect the journey from a family’s initial interest to becoming an enrolled student. Rosie’s House currently continues to use Salesforce to manage prospective families before transferring their information once they register.
Marvin’s ideal future is simpler: bring those workflows together so the organization can manage more of the student journey from a single system.
The team is also exploring how data and emerging technology could help Rosie’s House better understand student participation trends, identify opportunities to strengthen engagement, and make more informed decisions about program delivery.
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The Outcome
For Rosie’s House, moving to DreamClass wasn’t simply about replacing Salesforce. It was about moving from a general-purpose CRM to a system designed around the needs of educational organizations.
Attendance and communication, two of the biggest reasons the organization began searching for a new platform, have become two of its strongest areas of improvement. Scheduling, student information, teacher access, and family communication can now operate within an environment built around students and classes rather than being adapted to fit inside a CRM.
And as Rosie’s House continues to explore notes, assignments, forms, and new ways of using its data, DreamClass has room to evolve alongside the organization.
When asked how he would describe DreamClass to another school, Marvin highlighted the combination of functionality, support, and usability. He described the system as intuitive, easy to navigate, and capable of covering the areas a school needs to manage.
For an organization that has grown from a small neighborhood music program to nearly 1,000 students, that flexibility provides Rosie’s House with a stronger foundation for its next chapter.
