Company Background

FoodCorps is a nonprofit working to connect children to nourishing food in schools. By engaging AmeriCorps members to provide nutrition education, working with school meal providers, and advocating for equitable food policies, FoodCorps fosters healthier school environments. The organization operates largely remotely, relying on a variety of tools, including Google Drive, Slack, and Box, to support over 100 staff members as they collaborate on programs across the United States.

The Challenge

FoodCorps struggled with scattered knowledge across multiple platforms, making it hard for staff to locate reliable information quickly. Without a centralized system, employees often resorted to repetitive questions in Slack or wading through an ever-growing number of files in Google Drive and Box.

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“We don’t have a centralized place for knowledge,” said Derryck Rosalez, Director of Operations & IT at FoodCorps. “We started creating a knowledge base in Google Docs, but even then, people had to manually search through documents. It wasn’t user-friendly, and it just didn’t scale.”

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These inefficiencies not only impacted productivity but also eroded trust in the information available. Staff couldn’t be sure they were accessing the latest version of policies or resources, further compounding frustration. As Derryck noted, “It’s less about where the information lives and more about how you get to it and whether you can trust that it’s accurate and up-to-date if you do find it.” 

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The Solution

To address these challenges, FoodCorps turned to Guru, a knowledge management platform designed to simplify access to accurate and verified information. Guru offered FoodCorps a solution that could integrate with their existing tools, providing quick wins without the need for an immediate overhaul.

“Guru spoke to me because it can be agnostic,” Derryck shared. “We didn’t have to move everything into Guru. Instead, it connected us to where files already lived—whether that was Google Drive, Box, or Slack—making knowledge instantly accessible.” 

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With Guru’s enterprise search, employees could retrieve answers from multiple sources without having to migrate all content into a single system. Its browser extension and Slack integration further streamlined access, enabling staff to find information where they were already working. Guru’s verification engine also stood out, ensuring that the most critical knowledge was accurate and up-to-date.

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“The fact that Guru lets us verify information is huge,” Derryck said. “It means we can trust what we’re seeing, which wasn’t always the case before.” 

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The Approach

FoodCorps adopted a phased approach to implementing Guru, balancing the need for thorough preparation with a focus on ease of use.  The process began with a 30-day free trial, during which FoodCorps explored Guru’s features and began migrating critical content. By using Guru’s bulk migration tools and connecting to Google Drive through enterprise search, FoodCorps minimized manual efforts and started seeing results quickly.

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“My biggest concern was the people hours it would take to migrate content,” Derryck said. “Guru made that easy with tools like bulk migration and the ability to connect to folders in Google Drive. We could get started without needing to do everything at once.” 

To drive adoption, FoodCorps convened a network of content experts across departments who were responsible for organizing content and encouraging usage among their teams. Guru’s browser extension and Slack integration played a key role in adoption by allowing staff to access information without leaving their existing workflows.

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“We didn’t want another platform people had to log into,” Derryck explained. “The fact that Guru lives where we work—whether it’s in Slack or in our browser—has made a huge difference in getting people to actually use it.” 

The Outcome

Since implementing Guru, FoodCorps has transformed how its staff accesses and manages knowledge. Employees no longer waste time searching for answers or repeating questions in Slack. Instead, they can quickly locate verified information through Guru’s AI-powered search.

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“The Slack channels used to be full of the same questions over and over,” Derryck noted. “Now, with Guru, staff can find what they need without asking me—or anyone else. That alone has saved so much time.” 

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Guru’s verification features have also strengthened confidence in the system. “When you see that green checkmark, you know the information is accurate and up-to-date,” said Derryck. “That’s been a game-changer for us.”

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With these improvements, FoodCorps is poised to continue scaling its knowledge management efforts. The organization plans to expand its use of Guru, creating department-specific pages and tailoring search experiences for different teams.

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“Guru is helping us connect the dots across our tech stack,” Derryck concluded. “Instead of chasing answers, our staff can now trust they’re getting the right information quickly and easily.” 

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Next Steps

As FoodCorps continues to build on its success with Guru, the organization plans to leverage two new Guru features: Pages and Knowledge Agents. These features will help address specific departmental needs while further streamlining knowledge access across teams.

Pages allow teams to create customizable landing pages within Guru, providing an intuitive way to organize and highlight critical resources. This feature is especially appealing to FoodCorps as they aim to develop department-specific hubs for information.

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“Our HR team recently asked if we could use Guru as an intranet,” Derryck shared. “They want a homepage for the People & Equity team where we could post things like who we are, what we do, and quick links to key policies. Pages will let us do that—and make it engaging  too.” 

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Meanwhile, Knowledge Agents enable tailored AI-powered search experiences, making it possible to provide targeted results based on specific sources and tailored prompts. For instance, FoodCorps can create a specialized agent for HR-related queries that pulls only from verified HR resources.

“With Knowledge Agents, we can train the AI to be more focused and send people to the right source every time. That’s exactly what we need,” Derryck said.

By integrating Pages and Knowledge Agents, FoodCorps will empower its staff with even greater access to the right information in the right context, driving further adoption and trust in the platform.

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