Challenge: The YMCA of Southern Nevada employs a seasonal and part-time hourly workforce that isn’t eligible for the same exact benefits as our full-time staff. Additionally, the payroll department received inquiries for pay advances that the Y wasn’t set up to support. 

How Rain helped: Offering an earned wage access solution to all employees allowed every employee the ability to tap into their earned wages when needed. The Y also had an alternative for employees who asked for a pay advance, and an EWA solution that cost the Y nothing to offer, which is an important consideration for any nonprofit.

Since 1944, the YMCA of Southern Nevada has been a place where everyone belongs. Dedicated to nurturing youth, promoting healthy living and inspiring social responsibility, we’re guided by our core values of caring, honesty, respect and responsibility. We work every day to ensure that all people, regardless of age, income or background, can learn, grow and thrive.

Tracy Guiremand, Accounting Director and Payroll Director for the YMCA of Southern Nevada is very protective of the Y’s payroll process. When her HR Director, Annie, brought Rain to Tracy’s attention, her first question was the same one she asks about any new vendor: "How much is this going to cost us?" Once she had the answer, the decision was easy.

We said no to pay advances for 20 years. Rain changed that.

Annie received an email from a Rain account executive who works with a lot of YMCAs. We get solicitations regularly, so we don't respond to all of them. But the account executive was persistent, and eventually Annie said, "Let's just see what this is about." Once she heard the presentation, she was genuinely intrigued.

Before we moved forward, Annie wanted to talk to real customers. When she found out other YMCAs were already using Rain, that really got her attention. She spoke with HR directors from other Ys, and I reached out to a few payroll directors myself. Everything I heard was positive. One HR director mentioned a situation where an employee had entered time they didn't work and received payment through Rain. But what impressed her was that Rain caught the error and refunded the money back to the organization. That kind of accountability matters.

We didn't evaluate any other EWA providers. Once I understood Rain's model, there was no reason to look elsewhere.

We liked the sound of no cost to us.

Over the years, I've had staff members ask for a pay advance. We weren't set up to offer that, so we'd just say no. When Rain presented earned wage access as a real benefit we could offer staff, especially for recruitment and retention, it clicked. We could finally say yes.

The other piece was the cost model. Rain charges no fee to the organization. The only cost is the optional fee employees pay if they want immediate access to their wages. For a nonprofit watching every dollar, that matters enormously. Why wouldn't we use it?

Implementation was smooth, seamless and easy.  

We started talking to Rain in July or August and decided to wait until the end of the year to launch, thinking we'd start fresh for 2026. Looking back, we could have done it sooner. It was that straightforward.

The implementation success really came down to Jason on Rain's team. He was with me every step of the way. We worked over Zoom, sharing screens, and he walked me through adding the Rain deduction as a data set in Paycom. He knew the system well, which made a real difference when Paycom updated some of their processes and we needed to approach a step differently.

It took only a few days to get everything set up, and the actual configuration time was less than an hour. Jason walked me through the deduction upload process once, and I had it from there. He offered to sit with me again on the second Monday, but I told him, "No, I got this." He made it that easy.

Less than five minutes. Every week.

My payroll cadence is built around Wednesdays. On Tuesdays I check missing punches and overtime. I told Jason I wanted the Rain upload to be handled on Mondays so it wasn't even a thought by Wednesday.

Here's what my Monday process looks like now: I get the invoice from Rain showing deductions, I pull the matching spreadsheet from Rain's portal, I upload it into Paycom as a deduction, and I'm done. The whole thing takes less than five minutes. Rain has not added extra work to my process. It's quick, it's clean and it matches every time.

We did have one small hiccup early on. The deduction amount coming through Paycom was higher than what Rain had reported. My CFO noticed it and was concerned. I messaged Jason right away, and we figured out together that a YMCA staff member had accidentally selected "Rain" instead of the correct deduction code for a staff donation. Rain never received that money; it was a YMCA data entry error. Once we found that, I reported it back to Rain immediately. Now I know exactly where to look if anything ever looks off.

Don't skip the pre-announcement.

The one thing I'd do differently is the communication rollout. When we launched, staff received communication from Rain announcing the benefit, and several of them reached out to us wondering if it was spam. In today's work environment, you can never be too careful. It would have been much smoother if we had sent an email ahead of time saying, "You're going to receive a message from Rain. It's a new benefit we're offering you."

Annie wasn’t aware that ”go live” meant that staff would receive communications directly from Rain, or she would have sent out a pre-announcement before “go-live.” So I'd recommend that any organization plan that pre-announcement communication before you actually go live.

Rain’s adoption pleasantly surprised me.

Right now, 29% of our employees have created a Rain account, and 11% have used it at least once. We expect those numbers to grow significantly over the summer when we bring on seasonal staff for camps and aquatics. Many of them are high school students who are comfortable with apps and digital tools.

I'll be honest, I underestimated how many of our staff would use it. I thought it would mostly be hourly, part-time employees. What surprised me was seeing salaried employees using Rain to effectively give themselves a weekly paycheck rather than waiting for the biweekly cycle. It's being used across part-time, full-time, and salaried staff. That was eye-opening.

I heard one story from a preschool teacher who was thrilled because she could use Rain to access her wages early instead of paying bank fees for an early withdrawal or overdraft. That's real money back in her pocket; it’s money she already earned.

If another YMCA calls me, here's what I'll say:

Rain is a meaningful benefit for the whole staff, including part-time and seasonal employees who may not qualify for other benefits. It helps people bridge the gap between pay periods when times are tight, without putting that burden on the organization. And it gives us something real to put in front of job candidates.

For any nonprofit worried about cost or workload, there is no cost to the organization, and the process takes less than five minutes a week. When I was first asked about it, my concern was adding another vendor expense. Once I understood that Rain's model doesn't work that way, I was completely on board.

We want to keep good people. Rain helps us do that.