The Goal: Scaling programmes And Fundraising Through Salesforce
Sector:
Nonprofit
Technologies:
Nonprofit Success Pack
Form Assembly
Laura Croudace, Technology Impact Evangelist for Cirrico recently spoke to one of our clients, Street Soccer Scotland about the amazing digital transformation they’ve been through with Cirrico. If you’re passionate about accelerating change through technology this is a story to inspire!
Street Soccer was founded in 2009 by their CEO David Duke, they are a social enterprise which uses football inspired training and personal development as a medium to empower people who are affected by social exclusion, to make positive changes in their lives.
David Duke, the founder of Street Soccer, experienced homelessness after the passing of his father. During his time in homeless accommodation David used weekly football sessions so he had structure and purpose in his life. This lived experience was instrumental in the success of Street Soccer.
“The effects of poverty are brutal and devastate communities. Living in this environment means people are faced with a lack of opportunity, which leads to a lack of hope.
I have experienced this and and can only describe it as being locked in a cold & dark room with no doors. Waking up everyday with a feeling of hopelessness can lead to poor mental health, addiction, crime & in some cases death.
That is why we are totally inclusive, respectful, and understanding while offering opportunity to anyone who needs it. We do not impose a time limit or any other expectations, only reassurance that we are here to inspire people to be all they can be.”
When Cirrico started working with Street Soccer we understood that there were a few important key areas that were important to them;
- They are a small team with limited admin power.
- Wanted a scalable solution that would have the ability to grow with the company.
- They wanted to store all of their data in one place, enabling them to do more.
- They wanted a simple user interface for frontline staff to log their work quickly and remotely.
Street Soccer is now established in 4 major Scottish cities and has expanded its services south of the border to London. Now with 29 staff, with many of them progressing to full time roles having started as a player.
Their football programmes provide individuals with multiple services that have created a positive impact on the lives of over 22,000 players to date. These include mental health officers that can provide counselling services, employment partners to help write CV’s and get individuals back into employment, addiction recovery groups and continually support individuals find permanent housing.
Before working with Cirrico Street Soccer struggled to organise their data, this was due to the fact that the data was stored in different databases and also in different formats. Although Street Soccer implemented Salesforce in 2016 they were not utilising its capabilities, only using Salesforce to log volunteer hours and save contact details.
Cameron Black, Central Operations Manager, explained that “Everything was held on many different platforms before we had Salesforce as our central source of truth, before this we had Excel spreadsheets, files and shared things on email which was very time consuming for Street Soccer who have big goals in mind of the things we want to do, and we knew that Salesforce was our key to unlocking our success”.
Not having one central source of truth massively reduced the efficiency of Street Soccer as they are a small team managing many important programmes, campaigns and helping people in tailored ways.
Their programmes help over 1500 people every year, through bringing those experiencing social disadvantages together to play football. Salesforce has sped Street Soccer’s programme delivery. In particular the platform has allowed Street Soccer to record registration data that was previously stored within multiple PDF documents. This caused a gap in data where unique or returned attendees weren’t identified.
Cameron went on to say that “It’s not a smart way to work, and having seen the impact Salesforce can make I knew we needed a better way to log, store and report on important data. I knew that when we wanted to fill in a funders report for example, all of the data of their local impact would be available to our fundraisers easily. In addition to this we required our programme team to have the opportunity to measure players progress, in order to help feedback to them on how well they are doing and help build confident people on the pitch and in their daily lives.”
Laura asked Cameron to explain what the implementation process was like, Cameron shared:
“Cirrico were a great help from day one, they made the transition feel simple, easy and were on hand to answer any queries throughout the project. We had full clarity on the project day to day and the Cirrico staff went over and above on numerous occasions. Having the ability to shape our own user interfaces has had a positive impact in many areas of the business and ensured we now have the correct information at our fingertips.”
At Cirrico we provide our clients with bespoke solutions, tailoring every project to each client’s individual needs. Ensuring that they get the best possible solution. Nonprofits vary so much from one another and we understand that no clients are the same, they could have different levels of data, different understanding of how technology can be used to empower their orgainisation and different technology already in place.
When asked about how working with Cirrico was, Cameron shared how our team member Killian made him feel at the beginning of the project,
“Killian was very good at explaining how we’re building the foundations of the system correctly and the input and detail we put in place now would pay off massively in the future. We didn’t want to be two years down the line and need to correct the system, and working with the team at Cirrico gave us full confidence that we would have the ability to have the right foundation in place to enable growth without having to keep revisiting the basics”.
For Street Soccer, user adoption of everyone knowing how to use Salesforce was key, and we needed to make sure that the entire team knew how to use Salesforce efficiently. This was important to the success of Cirrico working with Street Soccer.
Cameron shared that “The whole team is much more switched on and engaged due to the technology implemented and this will have a big impact across the business”
Salesforce has allowed Street Soccer to be much more efficient with their time, when speaking about the coaches Cameron said that “With the same amount of time they can achieve so much more.”
This is due to Salesforce reducing the amount of time the coaches spend on admin tasks, Cameron estimated that Salesforce saves them around 16 hours a week in time due to reduced admin tasks.
Another benefit of Street Soccer adopting Salesforce is that Heather Manson, the Head of Fundraising, now has all of a donor’s information at her fingertips. This allows for relationship development. Salesforce allows Heather to see what events they attended, how much they donated, how they donated and so much more.
Laura asked Cameron if he had any advice that he would give to other nonprofits?
Cameron was amazed with the capabilities of the Salesforce technology, stating that “Salesforce does it all for you and you don’t even have to think about it. Especially the Nonprofit success pack, as it enables you to segment data easily, send out emails to certain supporters and give you a dashboard view of everything happening within your organisation at once”.
Cameron went on to recommend using Cirrico as a Salesforce implementation partner as he believes working with a partner who can understand your organisation is key, and it’s something that Cirrico is passionate about, working with every client to give them a bespoke experience.
Cameron highlighted that “Developing relationships with individuals that support the organisation is key to our long term success and we’re able to see this from every view possible now, and where people are in their journey with us as a charity, we can see how people support in different ways.
Cameron also went on to say his other piece of advice for other nonprofits thinking about starting a digital-first approach through Salesforce, was that they should “bite the bullet, it’s definitely worth it!”.
We can’t agree more and wish Street Soccer the best luck in scaling their organisation through fundraising.
