ImpactMS founder brings 20 years of product leadership to a persistent civic problem: well-funded programs that fail to reach their target communities

ATLANTA, April 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ImpactMS, a community access infrastructure consultancy based in Atlanta, today announced the launch of its consulting practice focused on helping foundations, anchor institutions, and civic organizations diagnose and repair the structural barriers that prevent community programs from reaching the populations they were designed to serve.

Founded by Shawna Chase, a product leader with more than 20 years of experience in technology and systems design, ImpactMS addresses what Chase calls the “broken pathways” problem — the gap between programs that exist and the communities that never find them, trust them, understand them, or can navigate the friction required to participate.

“Organizations spend millions building programs and then wonder why participation is a fraction of what they projected,” said Chase. “The programs aren’t the problem. The pathways are. People can’t use what they can’t find, won’t engage with what they don’t trust, and drop off when the process demands more effort than the outcome is worth.”

A Diagnostic Approach Rooted in Systems Thinking

ImpactMS offers three service tiers designed for organizations at different stages of readiness. Engagements are scoped to organization size and complexity.

Access Audit — A 30- to 60-day diagnostic that maps where and why participation breaks down across four dimensions: discovery, trust, context, and friction.
Pathway Design Sprint — A 60- to 90-day engagement that moves from audit findings to a redesigned access strategy, including stakeholder alignment and implementation roadmap.
Ecosystem Connector Retainer — An ongoing monthly engagement for organizations that need sustained support coordinating across partners, tracking access metrics, and adapting strategies as conditions shift.

The consulting practice draws on Chase’s background in product management, Six Sigma process improvement, and Agile methodology — disciplines she applies to civic infrastructure rather than software products.

Addressing a Documented National Problem

Research consistently shows that community-facing programs underperform on reach. A University of California San Francisco study of social needs referral platforms found that provider adoption rates averaged just 7% because the systems connecting providers to the tool failed at multiple points.

“That pattern repeats everywhere I look,” said Chase. “The technology works. The funding is there. The intent is real – However the connective infrastructure between the institution and the community still has significant workflow issues.”

Atlanta as a Starting Point

ImpactMS is headquartered in Atlanta, a city that leads the nation in income inequality despite a thriving economy and deep institutional anchor presence including Emory University, Georgia Tech, Grady Memorial Hospital, and the Atlanta University Center Consortium.

The consultancy operates alongside Livin’in:Weekly, Chase’s newsletter covering arts, civic technology, and community wealth building, published three times per week on Substack and weekly on Medium.

About ImpactMS

ImpactMS is a community access infrastructure consultancy based in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded by Shawna Chase, ImpactMS helps foundations, anchor institutions, and civic organizations diagnose why community programs underperform on reach — and design the infrastructure that fixes it. The firm’s proprietary broken pathways framework addresses four structural barriers: discovery, trust, context, and friction. Learn more at www.impactms.org.