PA Nonprofit Uses Salesforce to Serve Up Streamlined Client Visits

Customer Case Study: The Lord’s Pantry of Downingtown

The Salesforce Foundation’s 10-seat license donation and the Nonprofit Success Pack can have a significant impact on charities’ day to day activities. The solution IT Edge CRM designed for the local nonprofit The Lord’s Pantry of Downingtown is an ideal example of Salesforce at work for Nonprofits.

The Pantry’s mission is to combat hunger by providing food to those in need. It’s a 100% volunteer organization that needed a robust system to manage both donors and clients. Apart from the regular visits that clients are allowed once per month, the Pantry also needed a system for  special distributions events throughout the year, including a Summer Lunch program, a Back Pack distribution, and Thanksgiving Groceries , among others.

Benefits of Adopting a Custom Solution Built on Salesforce for Nonprofits

A customized Salesforce solution from IT Edge CRM enabled The Lord’s Pantry to leverage a variety of new technical capabilities and digital advantages, including:

• The Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack’s (NPSP) native household and donor management.
• Campaign and event management to allow the Pantry’s staff to organize and maintain their special distribution programs within Salesforce.
• Removed the need to maintain a considerable number of physical paper records related to clients and their visits.
• Allowed for new reporting that was either never possible before or very time consuming to prepare.

Above all, the solution’s main benefit derives from the custom guided screens that IT Edge CRM created. All volunteers, regardless of their technical dexterity, can now easily log client visits without having access to detailed, sensitive client information. The system also enforces compliance with visit protocol and fulfillment of semi-annual requirements by all clients.

New Custom Client Intake Process

With IT Edge CRM’s help, The Pantry implemented a custom “Log a Visit” process in Salesforce.com: As clients arrive for their visit at the Pantry, the user searches for the client’s contact record, selects the appropriate contact, and logs the visit. The new “Log a Visit” wizard is comprised of a series of custom VisualForce pages that allow an intake user to quickly check in a client. IT Edge configured Salesforce security so that intake users had access to the guided process but weren’t exposed to sensitive information. This also prevents intake users from inadvertently disturbing client records and controls that are the responsibility of the Pantry’s office management staff.  The “Log a Visit” guided process does display exception prompts to intake users if the client they are currently processing has exceeded their allowed monthly visits or is missing required semi-annual paperwork. The volunteer can also register the client for special events offered by the Pantry to its patrons on the final screen of the wizard.

Results of the Salesforce Implementation

With IT Edge CRM’s solution and support, the Pantry has been able to leverage Salesforce.com, in combination with the Nonprofit Success Pack, to their great benefit. They can now generate complex reports in real-time — reports that were previously printed from the old system or calculated on paper, a process that could result in errors. The Pantry also now has an organized database of Households, Clients, and Donors. They also have a structured event management system with increased reporting capability. Moving to Salesforce has been an overall success and has provided numerous advantages to The Lord’s Pantry.