Small Charity Week, aims to raise the work and profile of small charities and ran this year from the 18th – 23rd June. It’s organised by the Foundation for Social Improvement (FSI), with the support of partner organisations.
We work with a large number of small charities and thrive on supporting these organisations, largely by implementing Salesforce technology. If you are interested in understanding how these organisations have benefited from using Salesforce, you can catch up on our recent blog, 5 reasons why we think Salesforce is great for charities.
During Small Charities week, we ran a FREE Webinar to share our insight on how Salesforce can support them to achieve their potential and improve everyday efficiency. Simon des Forges, Project Worker at Hertfordshire based charity Viewpoint, joined the webinar sharing his experience of implementing Salesforce. Catch up on it here.
Implementing Salesforce at Viewpoint – A Case Study
Viewpoint is a service user involvement charity in Hertfordshire which works with people to ensure that their views and experiences of people with mental health or drug and alcohol problems form part of the design, delivery and monitoring of services. They support their members to act as representatives, deliver training and self development by creating opportunities to improve confidence, resilience and progress where they want to.
During the webinar, attendees can hear from Simon des Forges, Project Worker at Viewpoint, who shares their experience of implementing the Salesforce Non-Profit Success Pack.
We recently caught up with Simon and asked him to share his experience on implementing Salesforce at Viewpoint.
1. What were issues was Viewpoint facing before implementing Salesforce?
As with many smaller charities, our ability to record and monitor our outcomes was not as robust as we wanted it to be. Our recording methods were varied and collating data would often be time consuming. We were unable to perform dynamic monitoring on our performance, meaning that there was a time lag before areas for improvement were identified. As our significant proportion of our services are contract based, we struggled to respond quickly to changes in monitoring requirements which required a sophisticated data management system.
2. Why did you choose Salesforce?
We didn’t to be frank! Our CEO went to a training course about outcome measures and heard from Heather at our Company about the possibilities that Salesforce could offer.
The inclusion of 10 free licenses made this a viable option for us and the design and development service offered by our Company sealed the deal!
3. How has our Company as a consultancy helped you through the process?
our Company have been fantastic at helping us look at our internal processes so that we would really work how we do things and how we can record our activity in an easy way. Many of our requirements were bespoke, meaning that we had to work together to get a shared understanding of what outputs we wanted. Regular meetings and updates kept us in the loop about the progress and we were able to start learning about the administrative side of Salesforce early on in the design process, ensuring that we could build up our in house skills to perform further tweaks and adjustments in the future.
4. What are the Business Benefits you have experienced since using Salesforce – Economic and Social?
By using Salesforce (or DORA as our system is called!) We have always been proud of the relationship we have with our members but we now have a data platform which backs this up, providing us with an instant history on the person we are chatting to, what they have been involved in and how they interact with the organisation. we have found a great improvement in our ability to dynamically report on our activity, which in turn frees up staff to focus on the frontline aspect of their work. Most importantly, we feel our members have benefited as we are in a better place to get full value out of the experiences they have shared.
5. What would be your top tip for other charities implementing Salesforce?
Make sure you sit down and spend time as a team looking at what you do, what you want to achieve and any current barriers which are stopping you doing this. The planning stage is a great opportunity look at your processes and make some positive changes. It may seem difficult at first glance to see how Salesforce can be shaped to fit your unique way of working but the flexibility of the platform means that even the most specialist services can benefit.
So if you would like to find out more about how adopting Salesforce at your charity could help support achieving potential and improve everyday efficiency, register and catch up on our FREE Webinar here.
