Case Study: South Ward Promise Neighborhood

South Ward Promise Neighborhood Positioned for Long-Term Success Thanks to Strategic Collaboration with Exponent Partners

South Ward Promise Neighborhood (SWPN) is a powerful collaborative of 26 organizations working together to lift up and invest in families in the Newark, New Jersey area. Their mission is to “provide a coordinated pipeline of services and resources that guides and supports families so that their children can live in healthy homes, succeed in school, contribute to their communities, and thrive in life”. The Promise Neighborhood program is an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education. The holistic vision of the program is a future where all children growing up in these supported neighborhoods have access to strong systems of family and community support that will enable them to attain an excellent education and successfully transition to college and a career. A future free of generational poverty is truly the goal.

SWPN, together with its backbone agency BRICK Education Network, was awarded a $30M grant from the Department of Education in 2017, to be distributed over five years. The organization grew very quickly because of this funding and was able to dramatically increase the services they were providing to families in Newark. This grant focused on promoting the collaboration of multiple agencies to support families. BRICK’s contribution to this is to provide wraparound services using the two generation approach. This concept focuses on strengthening the family so the child can perform better in school and increase their chances of attending college. SWPN’s partner network of organizations include maternal wellness initiatives, early childhood education programs, charter schools, youth leadership, legal assistance, grief support, college readiness and healthcare access. 

In 2018, the organization identified a need to invest in an information system that would help them increase their effectiveness and promote collaboration with the 26 partners that make up the Promise Neighborhood. With this in mind, they reached out to Exponent Partners to help them chart a course for future success.  

The Challenge for Exponent Partners

Discovering the possibilities

SWPN and Exponent Partners initially began the first phase of the engagement in September 2018 with a project that focused on launching a portal for partners. The success of this phase allowed the organization’s leadership to see the possibilities for the system and the second, bigger, phase of the project began.  The senior team had a vision of leveraging the Department of Education grant to create a Newark-wide database to strategically position the collaborative to continue their critical work even when the grant expired. 

Unfortunately, almost as soon as the second phase of the project work kicked off, it began to stall. The team realized there were concerning unknowns in their long-term strategy that were impacting their ability to make practical, tactical decisions about their information systems. It became apparent that taking a step back to address key business process details and strategies was necessary.  

Managing complex partner data

SWPN’s network of 26 partners meant a complex web of data relationships. The organization needed a way to gather and consolidate partner data  in order to generate the critical data they needed to report on outcomes. Their mission is based on collective impact, not about the impact of an individual organization. As such, their long-term data governance plan and how to incorporate data collected from partners had to be carefully and thoughtfully considered, documented and vetted.

The journey: crisis, stability, thriving

BRICK Education Network, as the backbone agency of SWPN, had a strong reputation in the community of providing immediate, direct support to families as they faced crises. Ready to build on that experience, the BRICK team asked themselves some vital questions: “What if we partner with families before a crisis to proactively work together in a way that helps avoid a crisis in the first place? Additionally, how can we strengthen their resources so they are better equipped to weather a storm?” This was a big idea, and one that the team at BRICK wasn’t sure how to put into practice using their information systems. 

The Solution for South Ward Promise Neighborhood 

Strategic Advisory Consultation 

The Exponent Partners team identified the critical need to strategically engage with SWPN and their backbone agency BRICK. Exponent Partners worked with BRICK for over a year to help them refine their vision and help bring it to reality. The kickoff of this strategic advisory engagement included an on-site planning session with the goal to help SWPN identify the long-term needs for their information systems and subsequently develop their five year vision. The meeting, which was held over two days early in 2020, allowed for the coming together and engagement of both their leadership and front-line staff with the Exponent Partners project team. The goal was to collaborate in strategic advisory work and lay the foundation for their information systems plan.

Focus on Milestones

Exponent Partners’ strategic advisory work, which unfolded over the course of a year after the on-site planning session, included working with Brick to bring the SWPN partners together to build on their deep expertise in key areas of a student’s life cycle and begin the conversation about how to best prepare the family for success at each critical juncture. Next, focus groups were held with the families in the community to hear directly from them what support they would find most valuable.  Guided by the Exponent Partners team, Brick was able to bring a wide breadth of service providers, parents, grandparents, and students together to inform the creation of an innovative and proactive milestone-based model for the important outcomes-focused work to support families in Newark. This work allowed them to identify key developmental milestones in each phase of a child’s life and build the plan to capture data accurately in order to tell the most impactful stories. Exponent Partners additionally provided logic models, process maps, guidance on staffing, and training to support this new vision. At the end of the day, data-based storytelling is extremely powerful and allows the collective to truly demonstrate their impact on families in the neighborhood.

Implementation of Exponent Case Management

As SWPN and Exponent Partners began to work together in a trust-based partnership, an important component of their needs came to light: a flexible and powerful case management system. To meet their complex needs, they chose Exponent Case Management: a fully-featured, customizable case management solution built specifically for human services agencies. The system allows SWPN to streamline referrals, consolidate data across programs and partners, and reduce the time and energy spent managing manual processes.   The flexibility of ECM allowed SWPN to easily incorporate their new milestone model into their data collection process and to create a way to proactively stay engaged with families for the long haul – from prenatal to career.  

A True Success

South Ward Promise Neighborhood’s investment in strategic advisory consulting and information systems design allowed them to build a proactive model for serving children and families throughout their community. Their progress is being looked at as a model for other Promise Neighborhoods throughout the country. The way they capture data makes it possible for them to tell powerful stories of the impact their work is having on families in the South Ward. As a result of this work and their leadership team’s clear vision, they were awarded another five year, $30M grant from the Department of Education in late 2021. This will allow the organization to continue their growth trajectory and ultimately serve more families in alignment with the goal of ending generational poverty. 

Into the Future

What’s next for SWPN and BRICK Education Network? Armed with a strong case management system and the data to better understand the effectiveness of interventions that low income families face, they are ready to tackle the next big challenge they set for themselves: “How do we move past getting families to stability and really set them up to fully thrive?” Exponent Partners is incredibly proud of the work they’ve completed with South Ward Promise Neighborhood and looks forward to continuing its support of this impactful organization.

All photos provided by SWPN, learn more here.

Case Study: The Exploratorium

How the Salesforce platform improved team collaboration, donor engagement, and data compliance at The Exploratorium

Founded in 1969, the Exploratorium is a beloved San Francisco Bay Area institution and global leader of informal, interactive science education. The Exploratorium creates joyful learning experiences— both online and in-person. The facility offers hundreds of exhibits throughout six spacious indoor and outdoor galleries. More than a museum, the Exploratorium trains educators and collaborates with partners worldwide on global-exhibit design. With a mission to transform learning worldwide and a vision towards increasing their impact, the Exploratorium embarked on a long-range effort to replace their data infrastructure, systems, and software.

The Need: To create new opportunities for the Exploratorium to engage with visitors and stewards members using a data-informed understanding of the visitor experience.

The Solution: A new platform CRM that integrates with the Exploratorium’s marketing and communications activities as well as its Point of Sale operations.

Solution highlights include:

• A 360 degree view of supporters has unlocked previously untapped multi-channel marketing and fundraising potential
• Customized reporting has empowered development staff to create and track new fundraising metrics
• New cloud capabilities ensured a seamless pivot to remote work during the pandemic and have eased the organization’s compliance burdens

“In the constituent management systems area, most nonprofits are not going to have the resources in-house to manage these types of sprawling, extremely complicated implementations. You need someone you can trust, who you can lean on and turn to when you run into trouble, when you have to do a complex thing. Exponent Partners turned out to be that trusted partner. That was the difference between success and failure for us.”—Chris Axley, Director of Information Technology, Exploratorium

Situation

Static and inflexible constituent CRM
The Exploratorium’s legacy constituent management system was rigid, static, and inflexible. This made efforts to integrate systems and data across departments difficult, if not impossible. The organization needed a robust solution that could flex and grow over time. The right solution also needed to be customizable and easy to use by a diverse group of stakeholders within the organization.

Fragmented and siloed data
Various teams within the organization were using different CRMs with limited integration. The result was a jumbled mix of disconnected systems—spreadsheets, databases, forms, workshop applications, ticket lists, and printed materials—that often had to be manually uploaded or undergo a cumbersome conversion to carry out fundraising and marketing activities. These manual processes negatively impacted productivity and often led to a duplication of effort between departments.

Limited visibility of the customer journey
Data silos between departments impeded the organization’s ability to have a 360 degree view of its supporters. For example, how much did they donate, did they come to events, did they utilize other Exploratorium services, and the numerous other touchpoints that were important to identifying prospects. This led to missed opportunities to cultivate new relationships and steward potential donors.

Clunky and static reporting
Weak data and reporting capabilities made it nearly impossible for the organization to develop and track useful fundraising metrics. Development staff were also hampered in their ability to design an appeals campaign structure for each need. The Exploratorium needed a customizable solution that could provide meaningful insights into development team efforts and facilitate the development of more robust appeals campaign structures.

Solution

The Exploratorium engaged in an extended discovery process and needs analysis aimed at the long term goal of linking its payment transactions, constituent management, and communications and marketing systems. Its most pressing need—and a key first step towards proof of concept—was to implement a new constituent CRM. The desire to have one shared platform that could enable a holistic understanding of the constituent journey across its operations ultimately led the Exploratorium to select Salesforce.

According to Patrick McKeever, Information Technology Manager at the Exploratorium, “We needed help painting a vision of the platform, how to build an object, and create a process to populate data in that object. Exponent Partners was able to come in and really listen to what people needed. And then put that through the whole process of what does that look like in Salesforce.” Exponent Partners also worked side by side with the Exploratorium’s IT department to plan and implement the successful migration of its data. This was especially challenging, as the old and new systems had a fundamentally different database architecture.

Importantly, throughout the project, Exponent Partners engaged in a practical team-based approach that allowed the Exploratorium to gain the expertise it needed to take ownership of the new platform. From the start, Exponent Partners and the Exploratorium utilized a collaborative approach across departments, contractors, and stakeholders. The result was a process that was flexible, adaptive, and seamless.

“The process was shockingly smooth.” —Kati Platt, Senior Manager, Development Services.

Results

360 degree visibility of constituents
When the Exploratorium first switched its constituent CRM, the fundraising team started seeing immediate connections that were previously obscured. “With more visibility, development staff can group people together in more nimble ways and see how they are behaving,” said Kati. As a result, the fundraising team is now able to surface and track more prospects. In less than a year, The Exploratorium identified and successfully voted in eight new Board members thanks to insights gained from integrated prospect research applications combined with the centralized activity tracking capabilities of Salesforce. This was vital growth for the organization’s governance body, especially during a tumultuous year due to the pandemic.

Customized reporting and metrics
Salesforce integrations like Apsona have allowed the Exploratorium to customize its data reporting and data transformations. As a result, the development team now has the ability to track specific metrics and capture supporting data to identify which fundraising activities have the most return on investment. With the numbers now at their fingertips, development staff have clear visibility on their progress towards fundraising goals.

The ability to face technology and compliance challenges with confidence
Although remote working capabilities were a low priority when the project first started, having a cloud-based platform became a critical factor during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Exploratorium staff was able to seamlessly shift from exclusively onsite to entirely remote operations within days. As Chris explained, “We don’t want the technology to be a barrier to people being representatives of the Exploratorium. Salesforce is a huge part of that.”

Using Salesforce to manage its constituent data has also eased the organization’s compliance challenges. Bringing the organization’s data into one system ensures a single source of truth; one that can be effectively managed to protect sensitive data and comply with the growing number of global data privacy requirements.

A vision for the future
The Exploratorium’s successful implementation of Salesforce as its constituent CRM has proven the promise of an integrated organization-wide CRM and what it can achieve for the nonprofit.

“Now people can see the promise of the Salesforce ecosystem linked up with our transactions systems….the overarching goal of being able to follow and communicate with people on their journey…and how that can be accomplished.” — Chris Axley, Director of Information Technology, Exploratorium

Importantly, as a science-based organization, the Exploratorium strives to empower its people to find new solutions to nascent problems. As Kati explained, with the new system in place, “people are excited about things they find online that Salesforce can do.” The organization’s new constituent CRM provides the foundation for endless experimentation and limitless possibilities.

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Photo credits: © Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

Case Study: Big Shoulders Fund

Organizational Transformation Using Salesforce

Big Shoulders Fund was founded in 1986 to provide support to Catholic schools in the economically disadvantaged areas of Chicago. Big Shoulders Fund has helped Chicago’s children in need achieve their dreams through access to a quality, values-based education. The organization accomplishes this by investing more than $30 million annually in scholarship support and academic enrichment for students, operational improvements for schools, leadership development programs for the next generation of school leaders, and academic programs and professional development for teachers.

“Exponent Partners has truly been a partner to us. They have brought best practices of Salesforce into our organization. Their in-depth understanding of Salesforce has allowed us to optimize and enhance our use of the platform, so that we can harness it fully to support various efforts across our organization. They have taught us how to fish, making us more self-sufficient moving forward.” – Kate LaMantia, Senior Systems Analyst, Big Shoulders Fund

Simplified processes led to YOY increases
289% increase in applications received, 93% increase in scholarship funds requested, 60% increase in scholarship funds awarded

Enhanced ability to handle large volumes of applications in short timeframes
Year 1: Processed 6,000 applications in the first hour; Year 2: Processed 6,000 applications in the first 9 minutes

Automated processes translate to savings in both time and money
Over 4 years, have saved 30,000 hours of staff time and significant personnel costs due to automation

Situation

Scholarship applications managed using spreadsheets and paper applications

Big Shoulders Fund was using a manual system of spreadsheets and paper applications to receive and award approximately 5,000 scholarships to students annually. These labor-intensive efforts meant staff spent a significant amount of time completing data entry. Moreover, the amount of manual effort involved made human error more likely.

Donor management solution fell short of needs

The nonprofit had been using a server-based system for donor management, primarily to record transactions. However, the system’s limitations were negatively impacting productivity. Big Shoulders Fund had created workarounds for some of the solution’s shortcomings, but this meant that some data was being tracked in spreadsheets, limiting the ability to get an accurate historical view of a donor’s profile and impact. According to Christine Sweeney, Director, Development Operations and Donor Services at Big Shoulders Fund, “We wanted a solution that would give us more agility in our fundraising and that would provide a single view of what engagement looks like over the life of a donor, so that they could build even stronger relationships.” The fact that the donor management system was on an installed server created additional challenges. “Staff in the field had to call the office regularly and ask for data to be pulled and emailed,” explained Christine. “We wanted a solution that was cloud-based, so that staff—no matter where they were—could easily access the data they needed and be more productive when they were outside of the office.”

Limited reporting capabilities for both scholarships and donor management

The organization wanted to move towards a more effective data management and reporting solution. The data was housed in multiple places, making it difficult and time-consuming to create reports, and the organization wanted to more efficiently collect additional data points. As a result, the organization was challenged to create meaningful metrics that they could easily track.

Tracking volunteer engagement was challenging

Spreadsheets were being used to track volunteer engagement based on estimates of hours completed. There wasn’t an ability to easily drill down into the data by school, volunteer, or engagement type.

“For the Tax Credit Scholarship, made possible by the Illinois Invest in Kids Act, we were given a two-month window to implement a completely different model than the one we already had in place in Salesforce. The nimbleness of the Salesforce platform allowed us to work with Exponent Partners and apply two models in Salesforce within the tight deadline. It was truly transformative.” – Kate LaMantia, Senior Systems Analyst, Big Shoulders Fund

Solution

Salesforce was implemented as part of a pro bono project that was donated by PwC. After the consulting firm completed their generous engagement in mid-2016, post-configuration, Big Shoulders Fund engaged Exponent Partners to provide training and support on their new Salesforce instance. Over the years, Big Shoulders Fund has continued to work with Exponent Partners on several consulting projects with a view towards optimizing the nonprofit’s Salesforce instance with improvements and configurations that are specific to nonprofits.

Big Shoulders Fund Scholarship Program: Big Shoulders Fund selected Salesforce in early 2016 as a solution to its challenges related to processing and tracking thousands of student scholarship applications received from 75 schools annually. The system was also configured to receive and award approximately 5,000 scholarships to new and returning students annually.

Tax Credit Scholarship Program:When Big Shoulders Fund was approved as a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO) in 2017, the nonprofit quickly identified Salesforce as the best tool to facilitate the related processes under the Illinois Invest in Kids Act. With only two months to launch, the application was created in-house using FormAssembly, a form building platform designed for Salesforce. Then Big Shoulders Fund engaged Exponent Partners to configure the organization’s Salesforce instance to allow for the capture of required data using processes that followed State-mandated rules.

Donor Management: In January 2019, Big Shoulders Fund decided to migrate their donor management database to Salesforce. Exponent Partners designed and configured a donor management system using the Salesforce platform, and also migrated the nonprofit from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning. In July 2019, Big Shoulders Fund started using Salesforce, exclusively, for both gift and donor management.

Results

Simplified processes for scholarship applications

The move from paper-based applications to online applications using Salesforce allowed for a 289 percent increase in the number of scholarship applications received from FY17 to FY18, a 93 percent increase in funding requests received from FY16 to FY17, and a 60 percent increase in scholarship funds awarded between FY15 and FY20. “The dramatic increases in applications and funding requests reinforced the fact that it was much easier for people to apply online instead of going through the cumbersome paper application process,” explained Kate. The organization also saved more than 43,000 pages of paper during one year thanks to the transition away from paper-based applications. Additionally, with the help of Exponent Partners, Big Shoulders Fund reduced the number of data points collected from 45 on the paper application to 15 on the online application, focusing on those that are truly of value to the organization. These improvements have been possible as processes and flows are now used, reducing the number of steps required to complete certain tasks.

Improved efficiency due to automation

With the automation of many processes using Salesforce and Form Assembly, Big Shoulders Fund has saved 11 work weeks per year of data entry for application processing and 67 hours per year for award processing, while eliminating errors caused by human entry of data. “We have saved more than 7,000 hours annually from automating our scholarship processes from paper to electronic,” stated Kate. “This reduction in hours has yielded significant personnel savings. Bigger picture, FY20 marks the fourth year of automation via Salesforce and Form Assembly, resulting in almost 30,000 hours saved, since the inception of the program.” With the help of Exponent Partners, the nonprofit also integrated Apsona, a Salesforce app which saves the organization even more time thanks to more robust and streamlined batch data entry, the ability to produce merge document for acknowledgement letters, and mass update and mass deletion capabilities that have equipped the nonprofit to significantly improve data integrity.

Configured Salesforce to receive and process Tax Credit Scholarship Applications

Big Shoulders Fund became the only large-scale SGO in Illinois to successfully launch the Tax Credit Scholarship application three years in a row. Salesforce enabled the nonprofit to efficiently accept thousands of applications in short timeframes, and then process them on a first come, first served basis. Year 1 resulted in over 12,000 applications, with more than 6,000 applications received in the first hour. Year 2 resulted in over 14,000 applications, with more than 6,000 applications received in the first 9 minutes. Year 3 resulted in further successes with almost 14,000 applications, 7,500 of which were received in the first 9 minutes. These results were achieved while ensuring compliance with program legislation and providing a high-quality customer service experience.

Enhanced donor management and insights into relationships

The cloud-based Salesforce platform is easily accessible to staff in the field, and now houses all data related to contributions and pledges, including donor history and notes. “Not only have we become more productive when it comes to donor management, but we now also have a deeper understanding of our community of supporters and how they are engaging with our organization,” stated Christine. “We are better equipped to manage and analyze our robust historical data of fundraising events and appeals, and then using it to inform decisions.” In parallel, thanks to the ability to capture donor permissions in Salesforce, schools now have the ability to steward their donors and cultivate renewal of vital contribution revenue.

Gained more sophisticated reporting capabilities

Access to real-time data is a game-changer when it comes to providing reports to various stakeholders, including the organization’s executive team. “Before Salesforce, most of that data wasn’t available to us, or if it was, it was difficult to aggregate and report on,” explained Kate. “We can now report on any data that we collect. For scholarships, we can report on the number of applications received, the top 10 elementary schools, the top 10 high schools, the grade level that is most in need, the breakdown of applicants by population and more. For the Tax Credit Scholarship, staff can now easily report on the cumulative history of the program, including the number of unique donors and total contributions.

Started to accurately track detailed volunteer information

The nonprofit can now track details about volunteer engagement at a granular level. For example, staff will be able to see accurate data about the total volunteers engaged by school, the cumulative hours over the life of a contact relationship, the engagement history with a given school, and service hours by service engagement type, such as mentoring, school service days, tutoring, and test prep.

Able to nimbly support the organization’s needs and growth with a flexible platform

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, staff at Big Shoulders quickly released an application for emergency support, thanks to the infrastructure that was in place in Salesforce. Following the application’s release, the organization was able to easily report results to donors, giving them specific details about what percentage of scholarship recipients were positively impacted by the donations received.

Moving forward, Big Shoulders Fund will continue to expand its use of Salesforce as the organization grows, with a view towards taking full advantage of the platform’s capabilities.

 

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Photo credits: Big Shoulders Fund  

Case Study: Pace Center for Girls

From Point Solution to Platform

The Pace Center for Girls (Pace) mission is to provide girls and young women an opportunity for a better future through education, counseling, training, and advocacy. Pace applies a set of gender-responsive, trauma-informed and strength-based prevention and early intervention practices, including academic and social services, with the purpose of ensuring girls’ future opportunities and success. With a statewide network of 21 Pace Centers in Florida and supporting a system of care for girls in Georgia, Pace annually helps more than 3,000 girls, ages 11-18, get back on track to graduate from high school.

Decreased amount of time to create reports: Reports that took 2 to 3 hours to create now produced in less than 30 minutes

Streamlined processes: Ability to document relevant metrics aligning social and academic services

Improved data accuracy: Easier to quickly identify and rectify data issues, which might have have gone unnoticed with the legacy solutions

“We wanted to have our program model and processes drive the system design, rather than having software dictate our program and processes. After evaluating several options, we realized that Exponent Partners offered a flexible solution that would meet our case management needs, as well as our academic requirements.”– Lymari Benitez, Director of Program Evaluation, Pace Center for Girls

 

Situation

Needed a scalable solution to accommodate the organization’s growth

Pace’s growth was pushing the limits of the non-profit’s legacy system. With 21 day programs (four of which had opened during the last five years), 12 outreach programs (11 of which had opened in the past three years in Florida and one in Georgia), Pace needed the ability to easily integrate data across centers to gain an organization-wide view of programs and outcomes. “In our previous system, each of our centers was a separate entity,” said Lymari Benitez, Director of Program Evaluation at Pace. “We had to go through many steps to pull together data across all our centers for predictive and in-depth analyses.” Forecasting more growth in the future, Pace needed a solution with a flexible architecture that could keep data f rom each center separate, yet also provide the ability for management to easily aggregate information as needed.

Limited ability to track important metrics impacted reporting

Pace’s legacy system allowed the organization to document details related to social services and counseling sessions. However, most of the data in the system was qualitative. According to Lymari, “The system was designed as a big journal. We were capturing important information, but not in a way that we could translate to good measures or behavioral progress.” Similarly, goal completion was difficult to track. The legacy system also made it difficult to capture key metrics related to academic services. It was difficult to produce reports about grades and school credits. Managers were creating their own spreadsheets outside of the system to track academic information and had to do manual counts in order to aggregate the data needed for reporting.

Shortcomings related to data collection and accuracy

“One of our biggest issues was the ease of data collection and data accuracy,” stated Lymari. “Sometimes we would make changes to demographic information in our legacy system, but had to wait 24 hours for those changes to be reflected in a report.” Such a delay was problematic when Pace needed real-time data.Batch uploads were also a source of f rustration for Pace. According to Lymari, “We need to do a lot of batch uploads, especially for attendance. These uploads were painful because they not only took a long time to complete, but they were usually full of errors and error messages.” As a result, staff would have to manually and painstakingly review the imported data to verify its accuracy, and then spend time making corrections.

“The Exponent Case Management (ECM) and the Salesforce platform integration will play a key role in facilitating our long-term growth. Thanks to their architecture we have the flexibility needed to adapt and support our ongoing expansion of Pace’s centers and programs without compromising our program model.”– Lymari Benitez, Director of Program Evaluation, Pace Center for Girls

 

Solution

Pace worked with an external consultant to conduct a technical assessment of their legacy system, and to identify a replacement solution that would better meet the organization’s immediate and long-term needs. According to Lymari, “We were looking for a cloud-based solution that would allow us to do case management, while also capturing academics. It was also important for the solution to be easy to learn as we would need to train staff across our many centers to be self-sufficient.”

Pace selected Exponent Case Management (ECM) and Salesforce for the ability to include social and academic services, allowing the organization to move away f rom a standalone point solution and spreadsheets to a fully integrated platform. This combination provided Pace with the flexibility to customize objects to track academic information. “The alignment between social services and academics was essential for our program model and the integration of ECM and Salesforce provided the flexibility needed to capture and access all our key data in one place,” explained Lymari.

After selecting and working with Exponent Partners to configure ECM and Salesforce to meet Pace’s needs, the organization did a phased rollout of the platform. “Change management was a priority for us as we were deploying the solution to 375 users and we wanted to make sure we maximized buy-in without overwhelming our administrators,” said Lymari. This strategic approach has been instrumental in the successful adoption of the new platform.

Results

Scalable and flexible solution

“The architecture of the platform is one of the biggest advantages offered by ECM and Salesforce, as it allows us to easily make changes when we add a center or program, or create a custom object to capture a Pace-specific service like our Growth and Change System,” explained Lymari. “We now feel confident that our technology will scale with our organization, facilitating the future growth of our centers and programs, while enabling us to focus on the girls.” The ability to adapt the solution to reflect Pace’s language has been greatly appreciated and has further boosted user adoption. According to Lymari, “ECM and Salesforce offer us considerable flexibility, including the ability to integrate our own language into the system, which makes it easier for all staff to use the platform.”The ability to streamline some processes and ultimately automate others is also a significant step forward for Pace.

Track and report on metrics for individual centers, and aggregate data across centers reporting

ECM is helping Pace document key metrics across its 21 centers and 13 outreach programs. Pace now finds it easy to track key metrics and compare the results with plans and projections, both at the center-level and the organization-level.Moreover, the system structure allows for easy documentation as participant information is connected. “Everything is centralized into what we call the case record,” explained Lymari. This provides Pace with several advantages. “Instead of having to access multiple places to document information, participants’ information is organized in one place providing a holistic view of our girls. In addition, because key information is located together, it is easy to create a report type, select indicators, and develop a report that has the information we are seeking.”

Less time required to create reports

With ECM and Salesforce housing all of Pace’s Centers’ data in one place, the number of flat file reports required has decreased significantly, as has the amount of time spent creating reports. “I used to need two to three hours to run 21 reports, followed by SPSS or Excel to merge all the data into one place,” explained Lymari. “Now, all the data is available in a single report that takes me less than 30 minutes to create.”

Easier to collect data, plus enhanced data accuracy

“With our legacy system, batch uploads were time consuming as we had to go through the data to identify errors,” said Lymari. “Now, the batch upload is completed in two minutes, the changes are reflected instantly, and any errors are flagged and can be immediately corrected.” Administrators can also quickly identify if a problem with data is a center issue or a training issue, and plan accordingly to address the root cause.

Improved collaboration among teams and widespread use of the platform

ECM has significantly improved collaboration between social services staff and academic staff. This benefit is a direct result of members from both teams working closely together on important processes that are facilitated by the platform. According to Lymari, “Team members have clear motivation and specific goals for working even more closely together to benefit our girls.”The usability of the system has also been valuable. “ECM and Salesforce are so user-friendly that more people understand the system and are using it in their daily activities,” said Lymari. With 375 users on the platform, it is also helpful that more than one person can document information in the system at one time.

Facilitating a shift from accounting and performance management to research and evaluation

Looking forward, Pace expects ECM to allow the organization to move beyond the measures that are being tracked every month and shift towards research and evaluation. This change will allow the organization to answer more important questions about how the programs are operating, integrating information across departments.

 

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Photos courtesy of Pace Center for Girls  

Tracking Breakthrough’s Impact with Data

The launch of Breakthrough was prompted by a need in the community. According to Arloa Sutter, Executive Director at Breakthrough, “I founded Breakthrough just because people were in need, and they were coming to our church wanting help. So, I put on a pot of coffee and started getting to know people, heard their stories, and then did what I could to come up with an appropriate response to the challenges to help them to come alongside and help them achieve their goals.”

Making an Impact on People’s Lives

As the organization grew, data became increasingly important. “We want to have an impact,” explained Arloa. “We can’t do that without the numbers and without the data. We can tell a lot of good stories, but are we really making an impact in the community and in people’s lives? For that, we need data.”

In an effort to better support Breakthrough’s programs, the organization selected Salesforce and Exponent Case Management (ECM). “Like most grassroots organizations, we’ve used a variety of different methods to manage our data,” stated John Smith, Chief Administrative Officer, Breakthrough. “The main reason we chose to go with Exponent Partners was the scalability of the platform. We needed something that would adapt and grow with us, and that’s what we find in the Salesforce platform and in the ECM app.”

The organization chose to do a phased rollout of ECM. “We engaged Exponent Partners for our first three or four programs. All of the services that we need to collect, we’ve built out for probably for another five or six programs,” said John.

Starting with the Most Crucial Program Data First

Choosing which programs to focus on first was an important decision. “We started our ECM implementation with the programs that we thought it would be most crucial to have data for right away: homeless intervention, support centers, shelter programs,” explained Yolanda Fields, Chief Program Officer, Breakthrough. “It was a process that wasn’t easy, right? But I think what made it manageable was our ECM implementer was available. The people that we had assigned to our team really took the time to understand our environment.”

Breakthrough’s reach is impressive, and its programs are now better supported with ECM. According to Arloa, “We’re working with over half of our community. Last year, we served 13,000 people in a community of about 20,000 people.”

Data is critical to Breakthrough’s ability to provide people with the support they need. “Recently, there was a woman who came into our support center,” said Yolanda. “I think our staff recognized that she had co-occurring disorders of chronic health problems with mental illness. And so, we started down the path of helping her to ensure the income that she needed. In order to do that, you cannot even imagine the amount of documentation and dates that are needed.”

The implementation of ECM had immediate benefits not only for Breakthrough’s staff, but also for the people it serves. According to Yolanda, “Because we were able to document her episodes of homelessness, we were able to say to the attorney, ‘Here is all of the information that’s needed to help her secure disability income.’”

The benefits of ECM have been far-reaching. “The use of ECM helps us to manage the data and then really to make real-time decisions and programming,” stated Yolanda. “It helps us to decide how we are going to use our resources, and so I think all of that is a part of helping us stay organized in our work, but also impactful and effective.”

Finding a Real Partner in the Social Services Sector

Breakthrough appreciates the partnership that they have with Exponent Partners. According to John, “With Exponent Partners, I found that we had a real partner in the social services sector who knew best practices from the field and could understand our needs as we were talking about our programs. If there were questions about how to do things, you know that they have the expertise in-house in order to come up with a real solution.”

Now, more than ever, Breakthrough’s executives are motivated by the tangible impact that the organization is having on its community. “What keeps me going is the people that I come in contact with every day,” explained Arloa. “We have staff who are flat-out heroes here, who I wish I could profile and tell their stories. We get to see people get up after they have fallen, and we get to see the glow in their eyes.”

John shares similar sentiments: “I don’t come to Breakthrough because I’m punching the clock to get a paycheck. I come to Breakthrough because I feel called to be a part of helping this organization become more effective and more faithful in what we do, and ECM is part of that. Exponent is definitely open to partnering with you as you use their product.”

To learn more, watch the video on YouTube or Vimeo and join our next Exponent Case Management webinar.

Chicago Benchmarking Collaborative

The Chicago Benchmarking Collaborative (CBC), launched in 2009, is an alliance of five education and human service agencies that collectively work with low-income individuals throughout some of Chicago’s most underserved neighborhoods. Christopher House is the Collaborative’s Project Manager. The CBC’s goal is to increase impact on low-income children and families through the sharing of data and effective practices.

Greater transparency and insights: By sharing data-driven best practices and strategies, partners can learn from their peers and make improvements that increase impact

Streamlined reporting: Centralized, interactive dashboards reduce the amount of time spent producing query reports, and enable staff to conduct indepth data analysis

Cost savings: New partners joining the collaborative benefit from a fully designed case management system and reporting platform, rather than building one themselves

“We wanted a more streamlined process for data collection and easy to navigate pages for data entry, so that we could produce cross-agency reports on a set of common outcomes and outcome indicators that partners use for comparative insights. We now have a shared platform with interactive dashboards that are a huge timesaver, and that allow partners to drill down on specific data points within those outcome results.”– Traci Stanley, Director of Quality Assurance, Christopher House, and Project Manager, CBC

The CBC identifies three key triggers of success in establishing their data collaborative. First, partners that see the value each member brings to the collaborative and share a common vision to increase their impact by making data-informed program improvements that will be more likely to deliver on outcomes. Second, leadership holds the most important role in sponsoring change to organizational culture to become data-informed. They communicate the vision and expectations to staff, establish a sense of urgency for the work, and make resource commitments to ensure change happens successfully. Lastly, there is a need for accurate data and a software platform to effectively evaluate programs and for learning groups to discuss how to improve based on data.

Situation

Need for a streamlined process for data collection

For some partners, depending on which software platform they had in place, data collection wasn’t user friendly. The process for inputting data often involved multiple pages and navigation challenges. By streamlining the process, partners would be able to spend more time analyzing data and making comparative insights.

Desire to improve data quality and empower individual partners

Higher quality data would lead to more valuable analysis and insights that could be used to inform plans for data-driven improvements. With better quality data, organizations would also be able to learn from other partners, and implement strategies and practices in their own programs.

Goal to reduce the amount of manual work required to aggregate data

Reports that detailed numbers and percentages were easy to create, but data visuals had to be created outside of the CBC’s software by copying and pasting information  into PowerPoint. This manual process was cumbersome, time-consuming, and introduced room for human error.

“We are now in a position to help new partners get up and running, and support them as we expand the Collaborative. The more partners we recruit, the bigger the data set that we have to benchmark with, which is exciting.” – Traci Stanley, Director of Quality Assurance, Christopher House, and Project Manager, CBC

Solution

After the CBC decided to replace its existing solution, the organization issued an RFI to understand the functionality, capabilities, and pricing of four vendors. The information provided by the vendors was then used to complete a comparative analysis, which was supplemented by input from peer agencies.

The desire to have one shared platform that everybody could access ultimately led the CBC to select Salesforce and Exponent Case Management (ECM) from Exponent Partners. “The combination of the Salesforce platform and ECM would enable us to create dashboards and data visuals for our outcome results,” explained Traci. “We would gain the ability to easily aggregate those outcome results by different demographic types and results for students in specific neighborhoods.”

The discovery process with Exponent Partners involved a deep dive into the organization’s requirements, including the target population, assessments being tracked, and day-to-day activities of different functional roles.

“The discovery process was very thorough and captured our collective needs, some of which were in alignment, whereas others were agency specific,” explained Traci. From there, Exponent Partners went through the design phase, where collaboration with the CBC enabled them to solidify details about what would get built and for which programs. According to Traci, “We went from having many different programs, each capturing a few participants, in our previous system to fewer, larger program buckets that capture more participants.”

Results

Simpler data capture

When doing an intake, partners using ECM now have the ability to capture all intake information and demographics in one place, providing a complete picture of a family. With  the intake process being more efficient, staff time is saved and can be used to analyze data, look for trends, and determine ways to use the data to increase the CBC’s impact.

Streamlined reporting

The Collaborative can create detailed reports and data visuals in one place, using ECM and Einstein Analytics. “Einstein Analytics will take some of the mystery away from program staff who, in the past, have been looking at aggregate data reports that may show they’re not doing well in a certain area, but they can’t drill down to see which kids are struggling,” explained Traci. Partners have a greater ability to drill down on the de-identified data and access information for their own agency related to a specific program. “Having that information is crucial because each partner can individualize their approach in a program based on how specific kids are doing.” Partners also gain the ability to aggregate results in more meaningful reports to meet their unique needs.

Enhanced ability to consolidate multiple databases and ensure data integrity

Staff can now upload data from non-ECM users onto the Einstein Analytics shared platform and incorporate that data into dashboard reports for the Collaborative. The ability to be solution-agnostic when it comes to data sharing makes it easier for the Collaborative to recruit new partners. Data integrity is also better as manual work related to the creation of charts and visuals has been eliminated.

Increased cost savings and cost efficiencies

New partners benefit from design and configuration savings, and, if they choose to adopt ECM, they will also benefit from a fully designed case management system and reporting platform, which can be configured to meet the needs of their individual programs. Cost savings will also be achieved with Einstein Analytics, which will allow Christopher House to build dashboards for multiple organizations that can then login and access their outcome reports. Cost efficiencies have been achieved as Exponent Partners can configure multiple systems in an uninterrupted period of time as a single project, rather than as separate, standalone projects.

Established effective practices

The Collaborative uses the data to inform decisions related to the establishment of program practices and strategies. For example, rather than working in silos, members can now examine data, hold group discussions to explore what contributed to those results, and then determine best practices that can be shared and implemented by partners to increase impact on children, youth, and families.

Improved quality of services

Thanks to programmatic changes or professional development that is instituted based on data, the Collaborative is seeing better outcome results and an increase in the overall quality of the program, which ultimately benefits students and families.

Increased transparency and insights

By using a standardized set of measures, partners have access to valuable benchmark data, and can easily see how their program results stack up against those of other partners. The sharing of data, best practices and strategies is a game-changer when compared to partners’ past attempts to benchmark against their own data from the previous year.

More Resources

The CBC is launching a newly published guide, which is titled Increasing Mission Impact through Collaborative Learning, and serves as a toolkit for the nonprofit sector with strategies and best practices the CBC has learned over the past 10 years. For more information about the CBC or to purchase a copy of the guide, visit christopherhouse.org/cbc.

 

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Photo credits: Christopher House