StreetVet - Increasing Efficiency with the Nonprofit Success Pack
Sector:
Nonprofit
Technologies:
Nonprofit Success Pack
Form Assembly
StreetVet is multi-award winning, volunteer led, fast growing charity, established in 2016.
The focus of the charity is for volunteer vets and veterinary nurses to provide essential, free of charge, veterinary services to those in need, primarily those who would struggle to access veterinary care through other providers due to lack of mobility, finances or trust.
Some individuals have had their pets since before losing their homes, others have had the responsibility of pet ownership thrust upon them due to many different circumstances, but whichever way someone has taken on the role of an owner. StreetVet recognises the strength of the human-animal bond and aims to provide veterinary care for those who need it most.
StreetVet has a team of approx. 300 vet and vet nurse volunteers and have performed over 3500 consultations. Most have full time roles within the veterinary industry and volunteer for a few hours in the evenings or/and at weekends. During these outreaches the StreetVet Team have delivered free preventative and reactive veterinary care, procedures such as simple diagnostic tests, flea and worming treatment, education and daily essentials.
When Cirrico started working with StreetVet we understood that there were a few important key areas that were a priority for them;
- They wanted to store all of their data on one platform that was accessible to all members of staff in real time
- They are a small team and needed something that was not labour intensive
- They wanted a scalable solution which would be able to grow with the organisation
Before working with Cirrico StreetVet had very little technology. Zoe Abbotts, Managing Director joined StreetVet in early 2020 and began to implement a more professional infrastructure and set of processes for the team to work within. After a few months she introduced the team to Microsoft Teams, a simple yet powerful tool which enabled the team to share information, documents and meet with one another all in one place. Zoe knew having worked with technology during her career that having StreetVet set up in a digital-driven way would be the ultimate key in ensuring that they have everything they needed in their toolkit in order to be successful.
Not having a CRM technology in place was a real challenge, an example of the impact of this was that there were no records for supplier or partner contacts, the detail was all in peoples heads. The lack of a database also meant that they were missing out on potential donations as their supporters were not being communicated to.
On Zoe’s first week at the organisation, Zoe noticed that no emails were being received through the webform on the website. Upon further investigation Zoe found over 6000 unread emails that had got “stuck” from upto 18 months prior with communications ranging from people needing help with their pet, while others wanted to make donations to the organisation. Zoe spent the next couple of weeks working through the emails, sifting out the spam and replied to all the genuine ones. This was an extremely time consuming task that would not have occurred if StreetVet had been using a tool like Salesforce to create cases or service tickets when a communication is directed through their system. She also knew that she needed an implementation partner that could advise on best practice and help build their CRM to solve their issues and ensure they never missed another opportunity to connect with a donor again
StreetVet came to Cirrico looking for a solution that would provide them with a database that would contain all of their suppliers, donors and volunteers data, achieving this would help StreetVet work more efficiently and allow the organisation to grow. Staff members at StreetVet had limited experience with technology similar to Salesforce, however this had no impact on the success of the implementation of Salesforce for StreetVet.
When asked about the implementation process, Zoe shared “We have a team of four. Two are technically competent and two hadn’t used anything like Salesforce before. Ellie was very good at patiently working through each process, walking the users through step by step, explaining how everything works and why it is done in that way. I was very impressed with her as she immediately understood the impact we were trying to make, and looked at the project with us in a creative way to give us the biggest return on our investment”.
At Cirrico we are totally focused on delivering bespoke solutions to our clients, these solutions are unique and tailored to the clients exact needs. We understand that every nonprofit is different in aspects such as size, in different stages of their journey, have different levels of data and different understandings of how technology can empower their organisation.
When asked how working with Cirrico was, Zoe said “Prior to the Kickoff meeting and initial two exploratory workshops I was really anxious about implementing a brand new solution that I didn’t understand fully. I was acutely aware that I didn’t know what I didn’t know and I was also worried that I wouldn’t be following best practices and tried and tested methods. Ultimately I was frightened of ending up with a tool that wouldn’t/couldn’t be used by the team, that added little ROI and cost us a lot of money to implement. However Ellie quickly put my mind at rest. It was clear from the beginning that she was hugely experienced with NPSP and really good at providing suggestions for us and showcasing what had previously worked well. As she guided us through the exploratory and design process, I felt much less anxious as I knew I was in safe hands. If I was a Salesforce doubter, working with Ellie would have totally changed that”.
Salesforce has enabled StreetVet to be much more efficient with their time and assignment of tasks. Previously StreetVet had two paid staff members and a volunteer managing the volunteer leads and onboarding process sporadically on a day to day basis. With the implementation of Salesforce this process has been streamlined and is now solely owned by the volunteer, the staff members only need to become involved if the volunteer requests assistance. Zoe estimates that this has saved StreetVet at least 2-3 working days a month!
Zoe also said that “Previously although there were only three or four of us working together the data share just wasn’t at the level it needed to be, this made completing even simple tasks complicated. Now we have Salesforce it’s so much easier to share and view the same data together, working as a team much more seamless now”.
We work with nonprofits of every size and type, we love hearing from our clients what their advice to other nonprofits would be.
We asked Zoe what her advice would be to other nonprofits, she stated that “I wish that StreetVet worked with Cirrico and implemented Salesforce years ago! Salesforce works like a dream and has enhanced our operations, reducing the time taken to carry out certain tasks by hours, it would be very useful for even small teams with two or three staff. For me using Salesforce is a no brainer, for any nonprofits out there thinking about getting Salesforce – just do it.”`
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