Volunteer Centres Ireland Makes a Difference to People’s Lives Thanks to the Salesforce Foundation

Challenge

• Volunteer Centres Ireland (VCI) is responsible for developing volunteering throughout Ireland and supports local volunteer centres across the country. Its core service is as a volunteer bureau, which matches volunteers with a wide range of community and voluntary projects.
• In order to match volunteers, local volunteer centres accumulate a large amount of information. The collected information was being stored on separate, disconnected systems, ranging from Access to Filemaker databases, and spreadsheets to paper-based systems.
• The fragmented system meant it was hard to find relevant information and to share information between the different Centres.
   

Solution

• Volunteer Centres Ireland applied to the Salesforce Foundation for a grant for Salesforce licences, and was successful.  
• VCI received 40 licences for Sales Force Automation (SFA) on-demand CRM solution.  
• Salesforce SFA was deployed to the VCI’s existing nine local centres, with customisation and configuration taking just weeks.
   

Results

• VCI now has a single, comprehensive view of every aspect of volunteering across the local centres.
• Salesforce SFA is used to identify, track and support volunteer programmes, and also to match volunteers’ skills with volunteering opportunities.  
• VCI is also using Salesforce SFA to develop, execute and analyse the success of promotional campaigns, and to provide reporting and analytics on its volunteering programmes.