Case Study

Turning HubSpot into a Custom Teacher Portal for Kids Feeding Kids

Kids Feeding Kids had outgrown the Google Forms, spreadsheets, and email chains used to manage its growing teacher program. HIVE Strategy transformed HubSpot into a fully custom program management portal that guides teachers through every stage while giving KFK one centralized system to manage the entire lifecycle.

150+: Custom CRM Properties
5: Custom deal pipelines
10+: Conditional portal modules
2: Custom CRM objects

About the Project

What we were solving for.

Kids Feeding Kids had built a successful program around tools that were never designed to operate as a unified system.

Teacher applications lived in Google Forms. Program information moved through emails. Milestones and reimbursements required spreadsheets and manual tracking. As participation grew, so did the administrative work required to keep everything moving.

KFK needed to bring the entire teacher experience into one system, from initial application through onboarding, semester setup, meal documentation, surveys, and reimbursements.

More importantly, the new system needed to make the process easier for teachers while allowing the program to scale without administrative work increasing at the same rate.

Bring applications, email communication, spreadsheets, documentation, surveys, and reimbursements together within a single HubSpot ecosystem.

Give teachers a personalized portal that clearly communicates where they are in the program and exactly what they need to complete next.

Use CRM data and workflows to automate notifications, milestone tracking, deal progression, and other processes previously managed manually.

Create an architecture capable of supporting more teachers, locations, and program activity without requiring KFK to proportionally increase administrative resources.

Tools & platforms we used

HubSpot

Node.js

“Derick did an excellent job learning the mechanics of our school-based service learning program and developing a custom portal that teachers will use as they work through program implementation for our Kids Feeding Kids program. Derick took a manual process that consisted of a set of linked Google files and translated it into a more streamlined and automated HubSpot process which will allow us to scale-up this program to reach more schools, teachers, and students. ”

Tamara Weber

Kids Feeding Kids

The Engagement

The Challenge

Kids Feeding Kids’ teacher program had reached the limits of the informal tools originally used to operate it.

Applications, onboarding requirements, semester information, meal delivery documentation, surveys, and reimbursement requests existed across Google Forms, spreadsheets, email conversations, and other manual processes.

The challenge wasn’t simply consolidating those tools.

KFK needed a system capable of understanding where each teacher was in the program, displaying the appropriate next steps, collecting information at the correct time, tracking activity inside the CRM, and automatically advancing operational processes behind the scenes.

The technical challenge was equally significant. HubSpot wasn’t designed out of the box to function as this type of teacher-facing program management application. HIVE needed to combine CMS development, CRM architecture, custom objects, HubDB, workflows, custom-coded functionality, and conditional logic into one cohesive experience.

And as the initial proof of concept demonstrated what was possible, the scope expanded significantly.

The ask was clear:

Turn a fragmented collection of forms, spreadsheets, and emails into one scalable platform for managing the complete Kids Feeding Kids teacher journey.

The Approach

Program & CRM Architecture

Mapped the complete teacher lifecycle from application through reimbursement
Created five custom deal pipelines representing distinct program processes
Built Recipe and Reimbursement Request custom objects
Created more than 150 custom properties across contacts, deals, and custom objects
Developed a HubDB-backed system for managing program locations

Custom Teacher Portal

Designed and developed a fully custom HubSpot CMS theme
Built more than 10 conditional portal modules
Rendered CRM data directly within teacher-facing pages
Created an app-like navigation experience that changes based on each teacher’s program status
Gated content and actions according to pipeline stage and CRM property values

Guided Program Experience

Designed progressive milestone unlocking throughout the teacher journey
Automatically surfaced the appropriate next steps for each teacher
Hid completed forms after submission
Connected applications, onboarding, semester setup, meal documentation, surveys, and reimbursements into a continuous experience
Reduced the need for KFK staff to manually tell participants what to do next

Automation & Custom Engineering

Developed Node.js scripts to create CRM properties, objects, and pipelines consistently across sandbox and production
Implemented property-mirroring workflows to overcome HubSpot’s form-to-deal limitations
Developed custom solutions for HubL variable scoping
Used MutationObserver-based form matching to reliably manage multiple HubSpot forms within individual portal experiences
Automated notifications, milestone tracking, and deal progression

Testing, Deployment & Enablement

Built and validated the solution incrementally across multiple project phases
Maintained a production punchlist throughout implementation
Created a detailed implementation guide and client-facing process documentation
Deployed CRM architecture consistently between sandbox and production environments
Launched initially with two teachers to validate the experience in real-world conditions before broader rollout

The Results

1 Centralized teacher portal

End-to-End Teacher lifecycle management

Scalable Program infrastructure

Replaced fragmented Google Forms, spreadsheets, and email-based processes
Centralized teacher and program data within HubSpot
Created a guided, personalized experience for participating teachers
Automated notifications, milestones, and process progression
Established a clear audit trail for every teacher’s program journey
Reduced manual data entry and administrative follow-up
Created an architecture capable of scaling with future program growth
Established a controlled initial rollout for real-world validation ahead of broader deployment

Kids Feeding Kids now has more than a CRM. It has a purpose-built program management platform running inside HubSpot.

Teachers move through a guided digital experience that adapts to their individual progress, while KFK staff manage the program through centralized CRM data, automated workflows, and clearly defined processes.

What began as a proof of concept ultimately became one of HIVE’s most technically sophisticated HubSpot builds, combining CMS development, CRM architecture, custom objects, HubDB, automation, and custom engineering into a single connected system.

Most importantly, the architecture was designed around where Kids Feeding Kids is going. As the program expands to more teachers and locations, the underlying system can scale with it without recreating the fragmented administrative processes it was built to replace.