CK Family Services is a faith-based organization founded on a calling to help children and families rise above disruptive, life-altering circumstances through stability and permanence. The organization helps with a combination of behavioral health, foster care, kinship care, and adoption services – delivered by a family of people to a community of people; because dark times are made temporary through the light of help and hope that lasts a lifetime.
The enormity of CK Family Services’ commitment to the well-being of children and their families requires a technology system capable of supporting and empowering that commitment. However, when Chief Operating Officer Dr. James Dominey joined the organization, the technology in place was simply not suited for the great task at hand.
“We were running off an Access database that had served us well for many years, but that was taxed to keep up with our burgeoning needs,” said Dominey. “The system couldn’t support the needs of our growing organization with over 250 staff members logging in each day. It needed to be rebooted and refreshed. That’s where Salesforce, as a cloud-based, multi-tenant solution, became an obvious choice for us.”
Salesforce for Nonprofits: Building from the Ground Up
Partnering with Cloud for Good, CK Family Services leveraged Salesforce technology to create digital transformation organization-wide, consolidate disparate legacy systems, and knock down departmental silos through the connecting of programs. The organization did so through a migration to Salesforce for Nonprofits and the incorporation of several Salesforce solutions, such as Nonprofit Case Management, Program Management Module, and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.
These solutions have granted CK Family Services a more reliable system that can grow and scale alongside the organization’s mounting needs. Visibility into programmatic data has established a single source of truth that enables staff to provide consistent experiences for stakeholders, and near-endless customizability also ensures staff is self-reliant in making beneficial changes to business processes when the opportunity presents itself.
Immediately following going live, CK Family Services witnessed a sea change in the ways technology could support its mission.
Nonprofit Cloud Case Management + Program Management Module: Commitment to Care
“Salesforce removes barriers to success and puts our staff in the best positions to succeed,” said Dominey. This is exemplified in the way case managers and mental health professionals have benefitted from Salesforce’s mobile functionality. These CK representatives often visit children and their families across over 150 counties in North Texas. Viewing notes from previous visits on their phones and using voice-to-text functionality to log new notes has been a massive quality-of-life enhancer for these staff members.
Nearly everything a case manager submits to the CK Family Services system requires supervisory approval to be submitted to the state. In cases of potential neglect—say a staff member observes cause for concern, such as unfit housing conditions or marks on a child’s body—CK representatives must collect and report that information to the state within 24 hours. Automated approval workflows created through Salesforce now greatly empower CK Family Services’ ability to share information across departments and efficiently address needs within truncated timelines.
“The controllability of the data is helping us make decisions directly leading to a level of efficiency we have not had in the past,” explained Dominey. Before Salesforce, the visibility and efficiency of incident reports were unclear and challenging. Now, thanks to intuitive flows and automated communication immediately notifying supervisors of approval requirements, 95% of incident reports are submitted to the state on time with additional visibility into potential bottlenecks in their processing.
“Much of the efficiency we’ve gained directly impacts how we can communicate and collaborate on specific records with ease,” said Dominey. “Visibility around notes for each case—each child or family member—are crystal clear, allowing CK Family Services to obtain a 360-degree view of each constituent’s profile and history with the organization.”
Experience Cloud: Empowering Families
Another revolutionary Salesforce innovation, named the Family Portal, is made possible through Salesforce Experience Cloud. Over 400 foster care families are verified with CK Family Services, and they must all submit documentation whenever there is a change within the household, which can mean anything from an update to insurance or licenses to the addition of a new family member in the household.
Experience Cloud will empower these individuals to submit updates electronically, instead of having CK representatives physically retrieve the documentation each time a change is made. While the technological aptitude of each user may vary, Experience Cloud’s Family Portal will make the process as simple as possible through intuitive dashboards, reminder and requirement notifications, and easy drag-and-drop functionality.
Managed Services: Sustaining Success
“Cloud for Good has been a nonstop and brilliant partner in identifying, driving, refining, and deploying numerous developments that have changed the way we do business,” says Dominey.
Utilization of Cloud for Good Managed Services has fostered a culture of consistency, change management, and best practices among staff, and the future of CK Family Services technology is poised to continually grow alongside the needs of children and families in North Texas.
“We’re very thankful for Cloud for Good putting together a monumental solution for CK Family Services,” said Dominey in closing. “Cloud for Good has an extreme knack for understanding our processes and making them come to life inside of Salesforce. They’re listed as the #1 nonprofit partner for a reason.”
To learn more about CK Family Services, visit ckfamilyservices.org.
