Increasing Program Impact with the Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud
The Client
Make-A-Wish Ireland has one simple aim – to grant the wishes of children between ages 3 and 17 years living with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy. Since 1992, Make-A-Wish Ireland has granted wishes for more than 2,400 brave children across the country.
The Challenges
Desire to Make More Wishes Come True
Make-A-Wish Ireland is an affiliate member of Make-A-Wish International. This offers the charity a global presence – for the safekeeping of our children, while being a fully owned Irish charity, granting the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions here in Ireland. Whether those wishes are to go on a family vacation, to meet their favorite celebrity or to have their favorite gaming console, the charity wants to complete as many wishes as possible to deliver hope, strength and joy to families in need.
But in order to continue enriching the lives of many, Make-A-Wish needed a system that could help them log, track, and market the amazing work they do in the most effective and efficient way. For Make-A-Wish, they saw Salesforce as a tool to help bring their organization’s data integrity and data model to the professional level they needed to continue impacting the world in a positive way.
“We needed a system that would empower our organization with the tools we needed to better serve our donors, and our Wish Families,” said Susan O’Dwyer, Chief Executive of Make-A-Wish Ireland. “But even more important to us, is that the system is easy enough to use. We want to have functional tracking within the system so wish granters, for example, could track notes from the multiple calls and meetings required prior to a wish being fulfilled; and for our staff to be able to find the information they need at any moment’s notice. Salesforce needed to allow our fundraising and marketing teams to run the reports that will help us continue to drive both donations and corporate partnership.”
Make-A-Wish turned to Cloud for Good to help them implement the Nonprofit Cloud and blaze the path, creating a sustainable data model that meets the needs for their growing organization while also laying the foundation for other Make-A-Wish organizations to replicate their success.
The Solutions
Enhanced Business Processes with the Nonprofit Cloud
When Cloud for Good first met with Make-A-Wish Ireland, it was incredibly important to understand the different stages in organizing a wish. “We have a very specific business process when it comes to fulfilling a wish,” said O’Dwyer, “Our system needed to enhance the process, not dictate it.”
The first step in understanding this process was to outline the different records and objects that would play important roles in the wish process. Wish Parents, Wish Children and Volunteers were all entered in the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) as contacts, while tracking the nature of their connections with each other. Each wish was subsequently added as a campaign, which allowed Make-A-Wish to connect Volunteers (who helped with Wish Visits) to a Wish.
Once assigned to a campaign, the Volunteer will visit a Wish Family to gather as much information as possible to help arrange the individual Wish. These Wishes play a huge part in bringing hope and excitement to the lives of some very deserving children.
A Wish Visit Volunteer will encourage open discussions with the child and their family and write a report of the visit to ensure that all relevant information and paperwork is completed and returned to Make-A-Wish.
When a Volunteer is assigned to a Wish Campaign, Salesforce automatically creates a unique URL that allows them to update the Wish Campaign record via a webform, so no sensitive data on a Wish Child needs to be stored on a personal laptop, in a document or sent over email. These volunteers do not require a Salesforce license to access the campaign links and can instantly transmit data into Salesforce.
Using the unique URL, a Wish Visit Volunteer can take their phone, laptop or tablet and enter any relevant information directly into Salesforce, meaning that Make-A-Wish has quicker and more reliable information to use in order to help make a child’s wish come true.
GDPR Compliance for Lead Generation
Make-A-Wish can now rely on the Nonprofit Cloud to manage constituents, volunteers, events, Wish Children, wishes and process donations. However, being based in the European Union means needing to comply with the strict data regulations set forth by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “When it comes to collecting the important data we need in order for our organization to prosper, we need to make sure we are choosing solutions that meet the requirements set forth by the law,” said CEO O’Dwyer. “Cloud for Good worked very closely with both our Data Protection Officer and I to ensure the solutions we were choosing would be compliant.”
After careful deliberation on which tools would best facilitate mindful, compliant lead generation and donation processing, Make-A-Wish chose Formstack under Cloud for Good’s guidance. This tool helps Make-A-Wish collect leads and donations via the website and is able to push that information straight into Salesforce. This integrated process helps decrease the need for manual data entry and increase data security and integrity by generating bespoke URLs for Volunteers to complete after Wish Visits.
Increased Accessibility with Wish and Volunteer applications – Formstack
“We wanted to make it easy for individuals to volunteer their time,” said O’Dwyer. “We want the entire process, from submission to granting to be supportive and easy.”
In addition to setting up GDPR-Compliant webforms, Cloud for Good also helped Make-A-Wish develop applications to simplify both the volunteer and wish submission process. Using the same native Salesforce app Formstack, the team was able to quickly create forms that can be easily maintained by non-technical users and facilitate quick and simple signups for events.
Using this process, the applications go directly into Salesforce for the Make-A-Wish team to view and address accordingly. “Accessibility of data is also important for our team to function like a well-oiled machine,” O’Dwyer notes. “Cloud for Good has helped us find the Salesforce best practices and industry standards we need in order to augment our business processes for maximum effectiveness.”
Increasing Efficiency with Third Party Applications – Conga, MailChimp
“One of the reasons why we were so excited about Salesforce is the ability to take advantage of their wealth of third-party applications,” O’Dywer said. “With so many applications available, we’re able to find a solution to fit our needs – and those solutions keep growing every day. With over 1,500 nonprofit implementations under their belt before we approached Cloud for Good, we’re confident that their recommendations are the best solution for our organization.”
- Conga: Because of the sensitive nature of their constituents, Make-A-Wish needed a tool to help them generate letters and documents that are vital to ensuring that consent and authorization are received from their Wish Families. In addition, Make-A-Wish also use Conga to thank their supporters and volunteers in a timely method.
- MailChimp: Raising funds and awareness are two critical roles of any nonprofit marketing team. For Make-A-Wish, their team turned to MailChimp for emailing needs. Using MailChimp, Make-A-Wish can take advantage of campaign object integration, tracking of vital email information directly in Salesforce and sync email addresses within their Nonprofit Cloud.
The Results
More Efficiency
Using their business process as a guide, Cloud for Good was able to configure Salesforce in a way that leads to greater efficiency for the Make-A-Wish Ireland team. They are now able to handle their entire wish process from within the Nonprofit Cloud, from wish submission to Volunteer Wish Visits and back to reporting and insights.
Better Insight
With all this data now housed directly within Salesforce, the Make-A-Wish Ireland team now has much greater insight into the success of their programs and efforts.
“Being able to report on how many children we’ve been able to help through wish granting, how many hospitals were able to support and the efficiency of our volunteers will be a game-changer for both fundraising and annual planning,” said O’Dwyer.” We’ll not only be able to show our supporters the direct impact of their giving, but we’ll also be able to better account for volunteer pipeline and the number of wishes we can grant in any given year.”
Higher User Adoption
“Cloud for Good has made Salesforce so incredibly easy to navigate and view. With only one system of record, including managing our Wish Visit notes and volunteer applications, the team has quickly begun picking up the system in a way we haven’t seen before,” said O’Dwyer. “Cloud for Good was an integral part in making sure we had a system that would both help our business grow, and scale for that growth. I’m excited to see how this will impact our team here in Ireland, and other Make-A-Wish teams around the globe.“
