Case Study: Eden Housing uses Salesforce to show grant impact

“Salesforce makes it easy to show graphs and data on the impact of the grants we receive and the resident services we provide. We can identify which programs are the most successful and then focus on seeking funding to support those programs. But the coolest thing is, it improves morale - people feel more motivated when they easily see what they’ve accomplished.” - Jennifer Reed, Director of Fund Development and Public Relations

Eden Housing is a nonprofit organization that provides high quality affordable housing across the state of California.  In its 47 years of service, Eden has provided a home for more than 65,000 people. Eden Housing is the long-term owner-operator of its developments, and is committed to preserving and maintaining its buildings as community assets and supporting residents with a range of services. Since the organization’s beginnings in 1968, Eden Housing has developed or acquired over 7,500 homes that house low- and moderate-income families, seniors, the formerly homeless, and people living with disabilities.

Eden Housing engaged Idealist Consulting to help restructure its data on the Nonprofit Starter Pack to better accommodate and centralize fundraising, grants, constituent communication, resident services programming, and volunteer activity.  

The Problem: Several entities all using different systems

Eden Housing is comprised of several corporate entities: Eden Housing Inc. is the development arm that builds, acquires and rehabs properties; Eden Housing Management, Inc. is the property management division; and Eden Housing Resident Services, Inc. provides services to all residents. All entities need to work closely together in different areas. As Eden Housing has grown, the departments naturally have different priorities. This can make it challenging for all departments to communicate effectively - Salesforce will facilitate the communication process.  

As Eden Housing has grown, it became apparent that there was a need for consistency in tracking, communications, and reporting.  Team managers were missing report deadlines for grant reports because they weren’t tracking tasks in a way where they could get reminders - they needed a system to provide “ticklers” to help manage the workflow. This just wasn’t possible with their prior system of Excel spreadsheets, individual cell phone address books, Constant Contact, and even rolodexes. There was no “one thing” that everyone was using.

The Solution: Salesforce and the Nonprofit Starter Pack helped centralize data

Adopting Salesforce helps Eden Housing keep information centralized and accessible to everyone who needs it. It reduces the silo effect, but also accommodates growth. Eden Housing works with many people who have constantly-changing contact information, and the organization is simultaneously getting new grants, so it relies on one central location for data.

The team at Eden Housing is now using Salesforce for organizing contacts, fund development and tracking, resident services program management/tracking and volunteer management (currently in development). For Jennifer, the fact that she can go into Salesforce and find contact information and organizational data so readily is very useful. Just the other day, she was sitting with someone in Services and ran a report, on the spot, of program charts with participation rates at one of the residential sites - something she never could have done previously.

Eden Housing Resident Services is now focusing on outcome measures to show the impact of its programs. The organization also just completed its end-of-the-year fundraising campaign - which included direct mail and online donations, and different payment types - and being able to show which donations connect to one opportunity is huge.

An unexpected benefit: Improved morale

Eden Housing has plans for a volunteer module on the horizon, and also plans to further fund development data. The team wants to be able to track volunteer time for the over 120 properties where Eden Housing volunteers will help with programs. This is another key data point that funders look for before choosing which projects they will fund. Additionally, the team wants to track when a volunteer effort leads to receiving a grant and better leverage the connections that volunteers have in the community.

An unexpected side effect of Salesforce is that it seems to be helping improve morale - it’s a visual way to see the large amount of work the team is doing at Eden Housing. Employees can show other people their impact and feel good about it. Employees will also be able to see how their peers are doing, which may serve as motivation to increase productivity and add a little ‘healthy competition’ to the mix.  Finally, supervisors will be able to use the data to support performance reviews and stay in better compliance with multiple funders.

We’ll be reporting back on Eden Housing when the organization is further along in its development - stay tuned.

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