The 18th Ward Community Story: Out of the Inbox, Into the Field

The 18th Ward serves 15,000 young people a year across every ward of New Orleans. For seven years, answering their families' questions was a big part of someone's full-time job. Here's what changed when those answers moved onto the website.

Sports is a means to an end

"Because we're a community-building organization, sports is a means to an end. If families can get all their sports-specific questions answered through our website, the conversations become more open, more substantive." — Lowrey Crews, Founder & CEO, The 18th Ward

New Orleans has 17 wards. Lowrey Crews, a former teacher and principal, started The 18th Ward in 2019 to be the one that belongs to every kid in the city. The first season was 40 kids playing soccer. Today the organization runs more than 40 programs in over 30 locations, and its participants come from 22 zip codes and 90 different schools.

The model is simple on purpose. Fees are on a sliding scale. There is no scholarship application and no questions asked. A family can pay $0 and their child can play flag football and basketball in the same season.

Growth like that comes with a quieter problem. More families means more questions, and the team answering them did not grow at the same pace.

Seven years of copy and paste

"Our team would answer the same questions over and over so much that we have a Google Doc with prepared answers to frequently asked questions. Over the last seven years, different folks on our staff would copy and paste from that document and respond through our generic 18th Ward email." — Lowrey Crews

Before, when a parent needed to know when a season started or what it cost, they went looking. Often they found Lowrey's personal number. Calls, texts, and emails came straight to the founder, and he answered every one. But a program that went from 40 kids to 15,000 cannot run through one person's phone, so the team built the Google Doc and shared the inbox.

The website, in Lowrey's words, was "pretty generic." It was not updated often and it had gaps. The team knew that. What they could not see was which gaps were sending families to the inbox in the first place.

This is not a story about a team that dropped the ball. Every question got answered. It is a story about a team that answered every question by hand, because that was the only way they had.

Out of the inbox, into the pool

"Any time that our staff spends on back office work is less time that we spend interfacing with our youth and families." — Lowrey Crews

In spring 2026, The 18th Ward added Civilized's chat and search bar to the Squarespace site they already had. Nothing was replaced. The answers come from the 18th Ward's own content, so a parent asking about swim lessons gets the 18th Ward's swim lesson answer, not something from the wider internet.

Families now get their answers before they ever reach the inbox. Responding to family email had been a big part of one staff member's full-time job. Lowrey puts it plainly: "That position is no longer necessary or needed." That same person is now at schools more, in swimming pools more, and on a laptop less.

"We want to spend the vast majority of our time running great programs," he says. "This is another area of improved efficiency, so we can spend more time with our kids."

The conversation moved past "how much does it cost?"

"Instead of asking how much does it cost or when does the season start, we're talking about the next opportunity, or how a child transitions from being an athlete to a coach in our workforce development program." — Lowrey Crews

The 18th Ward is a hands-on organization. Staff are in gymnasiums and parks, not at desks, and they are not on their phones when they are around kids. Before, a parent with a question had to catch a coach midway through a session.

Now the logistics are handled on the website, and the conversations that reach a human are different. They are about a kid's next opportunity, or how a 15-year-old athlete becomes a paid coach. "It fosters stronger and better relationships," Lowrey says, "because we're not talking about technical things."

For an organization whose whole point is community, that shift is the point.

What 200 conversations in a week told them

"Our parents are telling us that they need more programs for their kids, and they're telling us exactly what kind of programs they want." — Lowrey Crews

Leading up to fall registration in August, the chat on the18thward.org saw 40 to 50 conversations. The moment registration launched, it climbed past 200. Every seat filled within an hour of opening. The waitlist passed 1,500 youth, more names than the waitlist held all of last year combined.

That is hard news for a team that hates saying no. It is also information they never had before. Two things stood out.

Staff also use the chat proactively. Program directors ask it the questions a parent would ask, and if the answer is not there, they fix it on the website, on social, by text, or by email. "It's really helped our staff understand where the gaps are in our communication," Lowrey says.

"The least technologically advanced nonprofit leader I know"

"I'm the least technologically advanced nonprofit leader that I know. But the setup was way easier than I expected, and the support from Civilized was exactly what we needed to implement it quickly and effectively." — Lowrey Crews

There were a few technical hiccups early on, and Lowrey is candid about that. His team's mentality is "no barriers," so they pushed through them. Chloe, the 18th Ward's website administrator, placed the chat, the search bar, and the Contact Us link on the site in a single call.

What changed most is what Lowrey no longer has to think about. "Before, I used to worry about someone on staff checking our generic emails regularly and updating our website regularly," he says. "Now I know that's going to happen. It's baked into our weekly rituals."

What Lowrey wants next: a dot connector

"There are a lot of amazing programs and a lot of amazing people. If we think about those people as dots on a map, most often they're not connected. I would love for Civilized to be a dot connector for people in our community." — Lowrey Crews

When the 18th Ward is full, Lowrey wants a family to land at the Youth Empowerment Project, LOOP NOLA, the Boys & Girls Club, or the New Orleans Recreation Department without another search. One website, or any of theirs, as the place where a New Orleans family finds what their kid needs.

He has a swim example. Last school year, with a grant from the New Orleans Health Department, the 18th Ward taught more than 1,000 kids to swim. But the Health Department, the Recreation Department, and the 18th Ward were never fully aligned on it. His math says the city could be teaching 10,000 kids a year to swim if pools, funders, and program providers were connected, and if families knew where the closest pool was and when registration opened.

Connecting organizations so no one leaves empty-handed is what Civilized is built for, and Lowrey is already helping. He introduced us to LOOP NOLA, and he has offered to bring together the nonprofits who share his community center so they can see how it works.

For the executive director who is stretched thin

"Minimal effort for maximum impact. This is one of those solutions you search for as a leader: how can I get the most, with it taking the least amount of time and money? I don't see a downside, and there's pure upside." — Lowrey Crews

The core Civilized platform is free. It works with the website you already have, and your content stays yours. For a team the size of the 18th Ward's, that means one fewer thing to worry about and more hours where they belong.

"Any time or money we save goes directly to providing more youth opportunities," Lowrey says.

If your team is answering the same questions by hand, see how it works or read how to answer your community's questions when your team is stretched thin.

About The 18th Ward

The 18th Ward builds community in New Orleans through high-quality, affordable sports and workforce development programming for youth and families from every neighborhood in the city. Sliding-scale participation fees, no scholarship application, no questions asked. Learn more at the18thward.org or connect with Lowrey Crews on LinkedIn.