Salesforce CASE MANAGEMENT and online collaboration
The Client
Hamilton Families was established in 1985 and has become one of the largest providers of shelter, eviction prevention assistance, rapid re-housing, youth programming, and support services to homeless families in San Francisco, California. Their mission is to end family homelessness in San Francisco.
Challenges
After implementing Salesforce, Hamilton improved their data collection and, as a result, they became more aware of the growing need for additional housing for families in the area. They discovered that 80% of their clients who were able to obtain housing stayed in the rapid re-housing program, but were concerned by the number of those who dropped out of the program prior to finding housing. Hamilton needed a way to assist more families to become successfully housed, in order to decrease the shelter waitlist and fulfill their mission.
Solutions
Hamilton selected Cloud for Good to implement an integrated solution on their Salesforce platform to empower their clients throughout the case management process, enhance visibility among clients, landlords and staff, and improve coordination efforts between all parties. “Cloud for Good has contributed to our success by listening to our challenges and working with us to develop a solution. The entire team was responsive and knowledgeable offering input when it was needed,” said Elizabeth Hewson, Director of Strategic Initiatives.
Hamilton leverages branded Salesforce Communities to streamline the case management process. Clients can request housing assistance online and their requests are automatically entered into Salesforce and routed to the relevant Hamilton staff member. Clients take the lead on their housing search, and are able to search for housing options based on the minimum number of bedrooms, maximum amount of rent, and the city where the housing is located.
Further, the implementation of Communities enables all parties involved within the community to track activity and know status updates in real-time. It connects staff members with clients and landlords, helping overcome homelessness in the San Francisco area. “Cloud for Good was supportive of our goals, understood our needs and offered solutions that would help us overcome the challenges we were facing. Ending homelessness is our main objective and the implementation of Communities is connecting people to further our mission,” stated Hewson.
Results
The implementation of Communities within Hamilton’s Salesforce instance has allowed Hamilton to:
- Development of relationships with new landlords as well as improvements in relationships with current landlords
- Hamilton’s client base now has access to more housing opportunities because of improved coordination among Hamilton’s staff.
- The creation of a searchable database enabling clients to take an active role in their housing search and has helped increase the number of families who move from homelessness to housing. This impact extends throughout the city, decreasing the wait list that reached an all-time high of 234 families in need of housing or shelter down to 130 families still seeking shelter.
- In 2014, Hamilton’s rapid re-housing program successfully housed 90 families, and since implementing Communities, Hamilton is on target to triple the number of people successfully housed this year.
Cloud for Good and Hamilton Families (formerly, Hamilton Family Center) held a webinar with Salesforce.org highlighting their successes and implementation process. You can watch it below.
