American Red Cross, Bay Area Chapter Streamlines Volunteer Program and Lifts Resource Burden with Salesforce

"Salesforce creates a unified picture of our partners and internal processes, without diverting resources from disaster missions. This allows us to effectively manage our most valuable resources— the volunteers, partnerships, and donors that make what we do possible."


Challenge
  • The Bay Area chapter of the American Red Cross—the country’s leading disaster recovery organization—required a CRM solution to track thousands of volunteers and partners
  • An existing system proved too complex and inflexible to effectively manage internal data on 4,000 volunteers
  • Myriad criteria—such as the ability to centralized data, reporting capabilities, and customizability drove the decision-making process
  • As part of an organization that relies on volunteers and partners to respond to 70,000 disasters, train millions in preparedness and CPR/first aid, and collect over half of the national blood supply, choosing the right system was crucial

Solution
  • The American Red Cross, Bay Area Chapter deployed Salesforce Enterprise Edition to 70 users to meet the individual needs of the chapter, while ensuring information is centrally accessible when a disaster strikes
  • A database administrator took advantage of admin training through salesforce.com's Successforce Education to learn to optimally manage the system
  • Partner information is consolidated so that the chapter can work with partners in a more efficient and comprehensive manner – providing training, coordinating disaster response, receiving donations, and so forth
  • By integrating VerticalResponse, an email and direct mail app from the AppExchange marketplace, the organization distributes newsletters to its volunteer base and partners directly from Salesforce 
  • Dashboards track the number of people who take Red Cross training through Prepare Bay Area, a project designed to promote disaster preparedness
  • Custom tabs such as Agencies, Red Cross Offices, Orientations, and Volunteer Jobs track pertinent volunteer-related information—fitting the organization's workflow processes

Results
  • Centralized access to information enables the organization to place volunteers and coordinate partner resources at a moments' notice
  • Salesforce automates the volunteer intake process and unifies partner information across all departments
  • Insight into historical data and ongoing activities helps the Red Cross effectively plan and focus efforts
  • Scarce resources are diverted away from managing cumbersome and costly traditional software to building a solution on demand that fits the way the Red Cross works
  • The organization can now measure the retention rate of volunteers, conversion rate of interested volunteers, and click-through rate data of who’s reading its newsletters
  • Expanding the management of external partners via Salesforce will further advance the organization’s vital mission
 
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