"With Juro, contracting that may have taken me a week to do probably takes a day"

COOP Careers is a US-based non-profit dedicated to closing the social capital gap for underserved and underemployed first-generation and low-income college graduates. 

With contracts spanning every department—and no formalized process to manage them—the organization faced growing inefficiencies and operational risk.

When Pareen Kohlhaas joined as Chief Operating Officer in 2022, she was tasked with bringing order to the chaos. Her mission: to centralize contracts, support rapid hiring, and drastically reduce the time spent on manual admin.

We spoke with Pareen to learn how COOP Careers used Juro to regain control of its contracts, automate high-volume processes, and cut contract turnaround time from a full week to just one day.

The challenge: a messy and disjointed contract process

“When I first arrived at COOP in 2021, it was clear that contracting was messy and disjointed. Contracts were spread across a variety of tools, including Word, Google Docs, Adobe Sign, and Docusign,” Pareen explains. 

Because there was no formal process or repository, contracts were difficult to track. The organization had no visibility into who was signing what or where contractual obligations stood.

“Individuals throughout the organization were signing contracts without visibility or approval, and that was happening across a variety of different signing platforms, both for our own contracts and those on third-party paper.” 

This lack of control led to increased operational risk and consumed leadership time.

“Without a centralized repository for contracts, it was hard to understand where contracts were, where dollars had been committed in terms of funders and partners, and which funders hadn’t followed through with funding obligations.”

“I was spending roughly a third of my time trying to identify our contracts, check for risk, and see whether they were still valid,” says Pareen. “I knew we needed to understand the risk we were exposing ourselves too from a contracts perspective and mitigate that.”

The requirements: what did COOP Careers need?

To bring order to the fragmented contract process and reduce associated risks, Pareen set out to find a solution that could streamline workflows across the organization. COOP Careers needed a contract platform that could:

• Centralize all contracts in a single, searchable repository to eliminate the use of disparate tools like Word, Google Docs, Adobe Sign, and DocuSign.
• Enable approval workflows and oversight, especially for contracts signed on third-party paper, to prevent unauthorized commitments.
• Streamline financial oversight to clarify where dollars were committed and identify outstanding pledges from funders.
• Minimize time spent locating and reviewing contracts, freeing leadership to focus on higher-value strategic work.
• Support multiple departments and contract types, from funder agreements to vendor contracts and HR documentation.
• Offer self-serve usability and flexibility, with a user-friendly interface that made onboarding new team members fast and intuitive.

Thanks to its ease of use and flexibility, Juro proved to be the ideal solution for COOP Careers. 

The solution: hiring contracts automated through Juro & Greenhouse

COOP Careers implemented Juro in 2022, and the platform has since been adopted across most departments, becoming a central part of the organization’s day-to-day operations.

“We use Juro for all of our contracts,” says Pareen. “We predominantly use it for our vendors and partnerships, but we also use it for our funders and grant makers who provide philanthropic funding for us.”

“The platform has afforded our team great visibility into all of our contracts, and we’re seeing the entire organization supporting streamlined risk management as a result.”

The tool’s flexibility and ease of use made it suitable for organization-wide adoption.

“All of my teams work within Juro at various points, and Juro’s flexible unlimited user plans has enabled us to adopt Juro for general use across the entire organization. It is extremely self-serve and user-friendly, which means I can add team members into the platform, have them watch a few tutorials, and they’re ready to go.”

COOP has also integrated Juro with Applicant Tracking System, Greenhouse, to streamline the hiring process for the 250 cyclical employees their talent team hires twice a year.

 “Now we’ve integrated Juro and Greenhouse that process is seamless,” Pareen explains. “The recruiters select the template, generate the agreement, and that automatically attaches to the individual’s profile in Greenhouse. It has reduced so much of the manual, inefficient work that our talent team do, so they can focus exclusively on the real, human work they do as recruiters.” 

Juro has reduced so much of the manual, inefficient work that our talent team do, so they can focus exclusively on the real, human work they do as recruiters" - Pareen Kohlhaas, Chief Operating Officer, COOP Careers

The results: contract admin reduced from a week to a day

“If someone took Juro away from us tomorrow, we’d have a lot of trepidation,” says Pareen. “With Juro, something that may have taken me a week to do probably takes a day, if that.”

“The platform has enabled us to get a strong understanding of the sums of money going in and out of the organization from a contractual point of view. That visibility helps us to allocate the resources more effectively and stay compliant.”

“The big risk involved with slow contracting is that you’re spending resources, not moving towards your mission and goal. Anything that makes that more seamless for us, like Juro has, is incredibly useful.”

With Juro, something that may have taken me a week to do probably takes a day, if that” - Pareen Kohlhaas, Chief Operating Officer, COOP Careers

Beyond efficiencies, Juro has helped COOP Careers reinforce its values:

“Contracting in a modern age and as a nonprofit needs to be about working towards shared goals and purpose,” explains Pareen. The collaborative, interactive features within Juro facilitate that and make individuals feel engaged in the process, rather than just bystanders to the agreement.”

“I would absolutely recommend Juro. The thing that sets the platform apart for us is the interactive, dynamic nature of the platform and how easily we can gain visibility into what’s happening across our contracts. I’d particularly recommend Juro for any organization that wants adoption across the business, and for other teams to take ownership of contracting, compliance, and risk management.”

I’d particularly recommend Juro for any organization that wants adoption across the business, and for other teams to take ownership of contracting, compliance, and risk management" - Pareen Kohlhaas, Chief Operating Officer, COOP Careers