Trane Technologies skilled volunteers helped enhanced nonprofit technology use, so that they can help more women thrive in work and life.
Dress for Success Charlotte (DFS), one of more than 150 affiliates in 30 countries, was founded in 2000 and currently works in partnership with 80 Referral Agency Partners. In 2019, more than 800 women were referred to Dress for Success Charlotte for job preparedness, job acquisition, employment retention, financial education, and career advancement programs and services. 86% of these clients with children are single head of household and 10% are parenting grandchildren and/or next of kin. Key programs include interview and employment suiting, a professional women’s group, a job acquisition program, a fully equipped career center, computer skills training, and financial education.
DFS sought nonprofit technology support, specifically to leverage and expand the Salesforce instance implemented by their partner affiliate in Raleigh to enhance client interaction and data collection. A primary goal of this optimization is to allow clients independent access and navigation through service offerings. Dress for Success had been manually handling client interactions, which requires Referral Agency Partners to spend extended periods of time communicating with individuals via email, in-person, or over the phone. The organization hoped to provide clients with Salesforce access to create and manage their own Dress for Success user profiles, check-in with Referral Agency Partners, schedule appointments, see job boards and upload resumes. Additionally, DFS sought to collect data and track the history of client interactions.
In a Community Impact Project generously sponsored and delivered by Trane Technologies, a team of skilled volunteers, working with Apparo, partnered with DFS to help them enhance their Salesforce and make the build available to regional and national DFS affiliates. Volunteers reviewed DFS current processes around client interaction and communication, collection and documentation of client data, and services and programs to determine how to best leverage and enhance the DFS Raleigh Salesforce instance and then implement into a new optimized Salesforce instance.
Phases of this Salesforce optimization included Salesforce nonprofit registration (with Apparo assistance), a review of the Raleigh affiliate’s Salesforce instance, formatting of client, donor, and volunteer data, updates to DFS website login, and new Salesforce integrations.
- Volunteer Team: Trane Technologies
- Mark Phillippi
- Cole Burkhart
- Jennifer Hicks
- Scott Urbanski
- Dress for Success Nonprofit Team:
- Kerry Barr O’Connor
- Emily Wheeler
- Pam James
- Sally Ganz
- Fontella McKyer
- Kristina Aquilone
- Project Sponsor: Steve Hagood- Trane Technologies
- Change Agent: Alicia Melton, Hylaine
After the project was completed, we met with Emily Wheeler, Executive Director, and Alicia Melton, Apparo Volunteer Change Agent and Sr. Consultant at Hylaine, to talk about the significance of the work and the anticipated impact. Emily explained, “We desperately needed a way to both track information and share information across the team that allows us to be really intentional about the work that we do.”
Nonprofit technology limitations drove significant pain points for Dress for Success Charlotte
Emily shared an overview of the pain points DFS faced prior to this project:
- With no centralized location for data (clients, volunteers, donors), so they used several spreadsheet instead. This drove a series of pain points:
- Duplication of effort
- Risk of data loss and potential errors
- Excessive admin time merging and de-duping for reporting/analytics – “hours, hours of manual spreadsheet gymnastics”
- Siloed organization which limited ability to collaborate – “When everything is siloed by content of what we’re doing, that impacts the staff relationships that we’re able to build, which then ultimately impacts our clients and our volunteers as well.”
- Lack of process and communication automation slowed down service to clients
- Systems in in place did not provide comprehensive reporting or a holistic views of donors, volunteers or clients – limiting power of storytelling in fundraising and also business decision making
Nonprofit technology improvement leaves Dress for Success Charlotte well positioned to reach their significant fundraising and growth goals, so they can do more to help women in need of their support.
Today, with Salesforce in place and optimized for their use, DFS is experiencing many improvements.
- Improved fundraising capabilities – ability to create targeted campaigns, easier tracking and generation of reports
- Improved client email communications helps drive better service
- Increased collaboration and ability to cross-train staff
- Improved reporting saves significant administrative time – for example, creation of annual report now takes 40 less hours
- Enhanced access to data supports informed business decision making and bolsters ability to tell powerful stories about their impact
Most importantly, as a result of freed time, staff is able to dedicate more time to their referral partners and clients, delivering better service and leaving DFS well positioned to meet their goal of serving 10% more women next year (an additional 74 women.) As Emily says, “Thanks to this work, with Salesforce in place, we have more time we can spend with our partners to make sure we’re aligned on the work that we’re doing and that we’re supporting the women in our community as effectively as possible.”
We’re looking forward to our continued work with the Dress for Success Charlotte team through Apparo’s Tech Therapy program.
