Skilled volunteers assisted Matthews HELP Center in implementing a Salesforce optimization to support better management of their volunteer and donor data.
Matthews HELP Center (MHC) brings communities together to help neighbors in crisis by providing a bridge of short-term assistance for life essentials including food, clothing, shelter and transportation. MHC’s primary clients are families and individuals whose financial resources are being strained to the breaking point by unforeseen circumstances. They are proud to say they are supported through the generosity of individuals, families, foundations, area churches, businesses, and proceeds from their own Thrift Boutique.
In 2016, MHC partnered with Apparo and Centric Consulting to implement Salesforce for tracking their Social Work. MHC was using out-of-the-box Salesforce plugins to track volunteers and donors. They came back to Apparo seeking integration of their finance and fundraising accounts with Salesforce to streamline their data management. Currently, the HELP Center has over 170 weekly volunteers as well as over one thousand donors they would like to better track and report data on in their Salesforce environment.
Salesforce Optimization Needed
Apparo matched a team of skilled volunteers from Centric Consulting and a change agent from Ally Financial with Matthews HELP Center to support their optimization of Salesforce. Their goal was to improve their efforts in managing, tracking, and reporting data around their donors and volunteers. Centric skilled volunteers first conducted a current state assessment of their technology use, including documenting current processes, identifying pain points, and areas for improvement. The volunteers then provided a document outlining the requirements needed based on findings from their assessment. Finally, the volunteer team also will provide MHC with ongoing support of their implementation of Salesforce integrations and customizations to enhance the management of important constituent data.
The anticipated outcome of this project was to implement additional configurations in Salesforce based on business requirements for managing donors and volunteers. Making these improvements will positively impact database management processes, as Salesforce is MHC’s central portal for managing data, metrics, and reporting. MHC anticipates expanded operating efficiencies organization-wide, increased staff capacity, enhanced abilities to manage donors and volunteers, and improved reporting capabilities.
Salesforce Optimization Team
- Volunteer Team: Centric Consulting
- Jennifer Elliott
- Lukas Suders
- Glenda Earnhardt
- Nonprofit Team: Matthews HELP Center
- Sandra Conway
- Susan Ross
- Leslie Wieser
- Change Agent:
- Nicole Brown, Ally Financial
- Apparo Lead:
- Sarah Friday, Program Manager
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Salesforce Optimization Process
The Centric Consulting volunteer team engaged in insightful interviews with the MHC staff to identify existing challenges within Salesforce. Once Centric Consulting identified the pain points, they collaborated with MHC to develop a “wish list” to enhance and optimize their Salesforce instance. Through this work, Centric and the MHC team focused primarily on volunteer management and development/donor data. They created an easy-to-use dashboard on Salesforce where MHC employees could see a quick overview of their constituents. Centric also performed data cleanup, implemented customized reporting, created both a streamlined volunteer portal and an efficient method for MHC staff to track grants through Salesforce.
Salesforce Optimization Impact
With the enhancements made to their current Salesforce instance through this project, MHC anticipates the following impact:
- Ensuring Data Accuracy: Data cleanup will allow for precise data for future use
- Empowering Development Staff: Enhanced reporting will lead to a significant time savings for Development team members.
- Streamlining Volunteer Management: Independent volunteer scheduling will result in time savings for MHC’s volunteer manager.
- Unlocking Funding Opportunities: Efficient tracking of volunteer hours will open new avenues for funding, tapping into never-before-explored opportunities.
- Real-Time Demographic Insights: The new dashboard empowers MHC staff to gather demographic information in real time, facilitating informed decision-making.
- Cost Efficiency Measures: Potential to reduce the cost of contracted IT support could save MHC up to $1,680/year.
- Mitigating Keyman Risk: Reduced risk associated with a single staff member’s exclusive knowledge of Salesforce report-pulling enhances organizational resilience and knowledge sharing among staff.
MHC shared their thoughts on the project and the volunteer team stating, “Working with Centric Consulting has been a pleasure. They were able to assess our needs and guide us through the process. They customized Salesforce to meet our needs, enabling us to better fulfill our mission.”
Volunteer Experiences
Centric volunteer, Lukas Sanders also shared his thoughts. “These projects are my favorite to work on. I love helping nonprofits and seeing the joy in their faces when they receive a new report or field that will help improve their process.”
The change agent, who guides the project process, Nicole Brown said, “It’s been such a wonderful experience to work with both Matthews HELP Center and Centric Consulting on this project. The bond they’ve created is special, and I can’t wait to see how this Salesforce transformation will help accelerate MHC’s impact in the community.”
Salesforce Optimization Next Steps
MHC still had items on their Salesforce “wish list” include a portal that will allow volunteers to schedule themselves. Although the Apparo-led portion of this project has been finalized, Centric Consulting and MHC will continue to work together to finalize volunteer scheduling and time tracking. Their ongoing efforts will include training so MHC will be able to sustain their usage of Salesforce over the long term.
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