Client Profile: Haven’s Commitment to Survivor Support and Innovation in Bozeman

Published on 4/15/2025

Kareena Robinson
Director of Programs
Haven – Bozeman, Montana

At Izzy, we want to support you in supporting your communities. We also believe that communicating our successes, and those of our clients, is of value to others. That’s why we want to share the stories of folks who’re using the platform — to show how we can help, and to hear from our clients about who they are and how their work supports the communities they live in.

Recently, we sat down with Kareena Robinson, Director of Programs at Haven in Bozeman, Montana, to learn more about the work she and her organization do, and how Izzy has helped them  to achieve their goals.

 Having been around “a good long time,” as Kareena described it, Haven started as a grassroots movement in 1979. Back then, it was simply a group of local women in Bozeman who supported other women fleeing domestic violence. Eventually, those women became a non-profit, acquired property, and started running a shelter. Impressively, Haven has been supporting survivors of domestic violence, sex trafficking, and stalking for over forty years.

 Kareena herself originally joined Haven as an intern and quickly fell in love with the work. “I think that survivors are very inspirational,” she said, “in the way they overcome challenges and barriers. They're the strongest humans I feel like I've ever met.” Kareena also told us that domestic violence had impacted her own life. Her mom had been in an abusive relationship when Kareena was younger, and Kareena had once been in an emotionally abusive relationship herself. These experiences were a part of what led her to her work at Haven. “I just became really passionate about the work and supporting survivors,” she said. “So that's how I ended up here.” 

 Currently, Haven is beginning a number of new projects. The first of these, Kareena told us, is a transitional housing program. Because of this, Haven is also launching an optional financial education program meant to help with that transition. “We're looking to increase economic empowerment and financial stability for survivors, so we've partnered with our local Human Resources Development Council (HRDC) to do quarterly workshops.” These workshops, Kareena said, will teach budgeting, financing, tax preparation, and, eventually, workforce development. 

 Further to the goal of economic empowerment, Haven has partnered with Gallatin College, situated on the Montana State University campus in Bozeman, to provide scholarships to survivors of domestic violence. Haven will also hire an attorney sometime this year to offer support to survivors in family law cases.

Like all organizations which support survivors, while expanding the depth and diversity of the programs and services it offers, Haven has had to respond to challenges as well. Top-of-the-list is the cost of living in Bozeman. Affordable housing is hard to come by, and both Haven and Bozeman as a community have felt the impact. “During the pandemic,” Kareena said, “a lot of people fled to Montana, I think because of how rural our state is, which has made housing harder to come by and more expensive.” For survivors of domestic violence, who in many cases are in search of a place of their own, this can make transition all the more difficult — especially if they’ve experienced economic abuse. “That's why we ended up working towards developing our transitional housing program,” Kareena said. With strengthened financial education, survivors are more able to navigate the housing crisis. 

 Prior to starting with Izzy, Kareena and Haven had been using a few different platforms to operate their helpline, case management systems, and other day-to-day operations. The one they used the most was iCarol, but this platform had a drawback: it was slow, Kareena told us. Even then, it wasn’t the speed of the Izzy platform that convinced Kareena, it was the user interface. “What appealed to me about Izzy,” she said, “was the way it was set up and the aesthetic of it. It looked a little bit more modern.” 

 Deeper than the appearance of the platform, though, Kareena and her team found that the change was a substantial benefit. Izzy’s case management system, she said, was an improvement on its predecessor. That Izzy offered a helpline feature also meant that Haven could consolidate its services on one platform. 

 The translation features built into Izzy’s helpline software, Kareena told us, were another enhancement. “We've seen a huge influx of Spanish-speaking population here in our area,” she said. “So, when we have folks reaching out to us on chat or text, being able to translate so seamlessly is super helpful.” Another new accessibility benefit Kareena mentioned was being able to loop a translator in on phone calls. Via the Izzy platform, Haven’s help line operators can now access a translator through Language Link while on the line with a caller, allowing for acccurate and secure, third-party interpretation.

 “The other thing that has been really helpful for us, specifically on our support line,” Kareena said, “is the fact that there're options.” Now, when helpline operators answer a call, they have the choice of a short delay. Rather than being immediately connected to the caller when answering the phone, operators are asked to press 1 when they are ready, while callers to the helpline are placed on a brief hold. This is especially useful for on-call operators working the night shift. “When you get woken up out of your sleep,” Kareena said, “it's really nice to be able to take two minutes to compose yourself before hopping on to the phone with a survivor.”

 Tiered call distribution is now an option for high call volume times. “When we get a call coming through,” Kareena said, “if someone's already on the support line, then it rolls over to a second line.” With Izzy, Haven can use two phones simultaneously for its helpline, something it wasn’t able to do in the past. “It works the way that we want it to,” Kareena said. “We had a different platform before, and it just didn't work properly. Izzy has been really great because it does do that. We can get multiple calls at a time and not have survivors waiting for a call back.” 

 Above all, Kareena was most satisfied with Izzy’s customer service. “It's been really great to work with this team,” she said. “They have been super responsive and they've taken a lot of our feedback and implemented it.” Noting Izzy’s growth and development over time, Kareena told us that she had met with Toby and Eric a few years before Haven made the switch to Izzy. Initially, Kareena and her team thought they wouldn’t be able to meet the expense of the change, but when they did some digging and saw how much they were paying for the multiple platforms they had been using, they saw that consolidation under a single platform would be much more affordable. 

 In the time between that first meeting and finally switching to  Izzy, Kareena told us that Toby and Eric had added much to the platform. “There were so many cool new accessibility features they had implemented,” she said. That was how she knew that the team at Izzy listened, and that we were responding to the feedback we were getting from our clients.

 Thanks, Kareena!

By Will Belton