Rebuilding Together New Orleans Launches Instant Home Repair Status Checks with Civilized
Families waiting on a free home repair can now see where they stand at rtno.org, without picking up the phone.
NEW ORLEANS, September 9, 2026 — Rebuilding Together New Orleans homeowners can now find out where they stand on a free home repair without picking up the phone. The status check launched today at rtno.org is a custom Salesforce integration built by Civilized to work with their existing system.
The Hardest Part of Waiting Is Not Knowing
RTNO offers free critical home repairs — roofs, wiring, ramps, weatherization — to homeowners who cannot get that work any other way, most of them over 70 and many living with a disability. Demand has always outrun capacity. The organization's 2025 annual report names the tension directly: RTNO helped families at what it called "the fastest pace in our organizational history," and its waitlist still grew.
Many families wait 12-18 months for their services and RTNO staff bear the burden of 30-50 calls a day from families looking for service updates.
Every one of those calls is time a staff member isn't spending moving an application forward.
"Due to demand, our homeowners wait too long for help," said William Stoudt, executive director of Rebuilding Together New Orleans. "While they wait, they often become impatient, dejected, or disappointed that we might not be able to assist. Now our families can check in on their status and get answers immediately."
Technology seamlessly integrated into RTNO's workflow
Homeowners can now check their status instantly at rtno.org without placing a phone call. Entering a property address and date of birth into the site's search bar or chat pulls live updates directly from RTNO's internal Salesforce system in seconds.
Civilized built the connection specifically for RTNO, around four constraints:
"We didn't build this from a roadmap. We built it at RTNO's table," said Matt Wisdom, CEO of Civilized. "William's team told us exactly what was breaking. A homeowner calls to ask where they stand, and a coordinator who should be walking the next family through their paperwork is stuck on the phone instead. So we built a connection between the website anyone can visit and the records only their staff could see, so they can get the status of their application in an instant."
Time Back for the Next Home Repair
More time back for RTNO staff means less time it takes to process applicants and get them help. Every hour the intake team spends repeating a status update is an hour not spent screening a new applicant, chasing a missing document or scheduling an inspection. Handing that question to the website moves families through the queue faster.
It is also the first thing Civilized built for RTNO, not the last. Next up:
"Having a trusted partner like Civilized helps us modernize our organization," Stoudt said. "We're letting the experts build the tools so our team can do what we do best. This is just one of many tools Civilized is building to streamline our process and make our team more efficient."
Homeowners can check their application status now at rtno.org.
About Rebuilding Together New Orleans
Repairing homes, revitalizing communities, rebuilding lives. For 37 years, Rebuilding Together New Orleans has provided free critical home repairs to low-income homeowners across New Orleans, primarily elderly residents, people with disabilities, veterans and single-parent households. Work includes roof replacement, accessibility and safety modifications, weatherization, drywall, flooring and exterior painting. RTNO has repaired more than 2,500 homes, served a record 257 households in 2025 and, with United Way of Southeast Louisiana, opened a Resiliency Center to help households prepare for and recover from storms. Learn more at rtno.org.
About Civilized
Civilized is building connected civic infrastructure in New Orleans, public technology for cooperation rather than competition. The core platform is free, works alongside the websites and systems organizations already run and keeps their data theirs. It helps nonprofits, city governments, and other mission driven organizations answer every community question, reach the people who need them and the people who want to help, and connect with funders who share their cause. A growing number of New Orleans nonprofits have joined as Founding Partners. Learn more at civilized.org.
Media Contact
Matt Wisdom
CEO, Civilized