Building a Custom Solution with Salesforce

September 10, 2015  /   2 min read

All you tech-savvy people out there might be interested in this! Over the past year, Beyond the Block received the amazing opportunity to implement Salesforce, a customer relationship management (CRM) program valued at $15,000! The Salesforce Foundation generously donated this program to us. I worked personally and closely with our tech consultant extraordinaire, Kelly, in order to customize the program for our specific needs. The program is now officially live for BTB and assisting us on a daily basis!

Salesforce is an extremely versatile and adaptable program that is designed to suit the needs of thousands of different companies and nonprofits, who each use the program in a different way. To accommodate for this, Salesforce starts like a set of unassembled Legos and it is up to the user to assemble them in the way that best suits their needs. Kelly helped us put BTB’s Lego pieces together in ways and patterns that we couldn’t imagine on our own. The results have been amazing!

Taking education more seriously, putting more effort into school work, and thinking seriously about graduating high school and college—the vast majority of our students believe in the importance of these after watching one of our videos! We encourage our students to complete their education!

Keeping a tally of all the students we’ve reached—3,893 and counting!

In just the first few months of use, Salesforce has proven to be immensely useful for coordinating, organizing, and tracking everything related to the organization. And I really mean everything! This includes tracking donations, services we provide to schools, demographic trends of our target population, and student survey data. You may have received a confirmation receipt related to your recent donation to Beyond the Block—that is Salesforce at work! Storing and cataloging our students’ survey responses has proven particularly valuable in evaluating the outcomes of our programs. (To read what some of the kids are saying, check out this post about our global awareness curriculum.) Salesforce has allowed us to become a more efficient, mobile, and responsive organization, enabling us to put your donation dollars to the best possible use by keeping our overhead costs low and our program-dedicated budget high! You can be confident that we are harnessing the power of the best tools available to maximize our impact here at BTB!