How the National Ability Center will expand access to adaptive recreation with AI and data.

I joined NAC at a pretty amazing and pivotal time. We just hit our 40-year anniversary, and with the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Games coming back to Utah, we see a huge opportunity to scale our mission and prove our impact. We’re well known in Park City and across Utah, but less recognized nationally — and that’s the next frontier. With one in four Americans living with a disability, there are so many people who stand to benefit from NAC. And, as the head of marketing, I want to help us accomplish that — and Salesforce is a key enabler.

1. First, we want to build a stronger national presence. The demand is out there, and we want people outside Utah to know who we are.
2. Second, we want to use our participant, community, and partner data more strategically. We already collect a lot of data, and Data Cloud promises to make it easy to access and understand. That means we can tell compelling national stories and deliver hyperpersonalized program recommendations to people we already serve, which will help us connect stories and increase impact at scale.
3. And third, fixing the participant journey. We don’t want parents, veterans, or participants getting lost in paperwork when they try to enroll. Everyone has different goals, abilities, and needs. Right now, we ask for a lot — but what if technology and automation could remove those manual steps and red tape Agentforce promises to simplify enrollment so families spend less time on forms and more time in life-changing programs.

We need unified data for digital discovery. Our marketing has always been built on relationships and storytelling. To reach the scale we’re aiming for by 2034, we need the right tech stack alongside those human connections. That’s why we’re so excited about Salesforce — it’s the technology we’ve been missing to take NAC’s mission well past Utah’s borders.

We know most businesses would love to have what we already have: A product that everyone trusts and an ecosystem where participants, families, therapists, and donors are spreading the word for us. We’ve got a lot going for us. But we know that if you don’t already have a connection to NAC, we’re hard to find.

That’s why we’re working to deepen our use of Marketing Cloud. We’d like to target current participants via email and direct mail with event announcements, new season program launches, and personalized post-session follow-ups. We’d also like to seize the opportunity to engage B2B partners, donors, and like-minded organizations with personalized content — everything from program news to thank-you notes. SMS would be a logical next step, both because that’s where everyone is communicating anyway, and because, in our community, many participants rely on assistive technology apps to engage.

We’re starting with our technology foundation, because that will make everything else easier. Before we can fix the participant journey, we have to fix some legacy internal processes. We have too many spreadsheets, internal servers, external servers, emails, calendar invites, post-it notes — you name it.

Salesforce is helping us pull 40 years of information together to create one version of the truth, allowing our team to know what’s going on and take relevant, accurate, and timely action. That’s huge for us. And when it comes to IT transformation, we just can’t afford solutions that require constant tinkering. For us, it was that classic “do we build this or buy it?” question. Salesforce wins hands down — you’re taking a ton of work off our team.

Now Salesforce is our CRM, and we can build complete 360-degree profiles for each participant and stakeholder. That unlocks the ability to see how participant demographics have changed over time and use that data to guide our programs and marketing. For example, if I want to know which activities children with Down syndrome are having the best experiences with, Salesforce makes it easy to pull a clear, quick report. From there, we can grow our most used programs, bring on more instructors, and even launch a tailored marketing campaign.

At the end of the day, building on Salesforce helps us further our mission, serving people and positively impacting their lives with a focus on scaling our numbers and quality.

This is one of the biggest questions we think about. We serve the community 365 days a year, and quality of experience is paramount. If there’s ever a glitch, or if AI feels impersonal, that’s irreparable harm to what NAC has built over 40 years. So first and foremost, we’re making sure the tech transition happens smoothly and that AI responds in the way our amazing team would.

Agentforce is really the secret to keeping our NAC vibe as we grow. Our goal is for the community to experience the same NAC. It’s just suddenly easier to sign up for programs because they can complete everything in one go, all online, without waiting for a callback. If a parent, veteran, disabled adult — every person we serve — can get clear answers about enrollment details from Agentforce, our staff has more time to focus on the people coming in that day for a life-changing experience.

Internally, though, AI is also going to change things, and that’s what we need to grow. Leadership has to be clear that, yes, your day will look different with Agentforce. But no one wants to spend hours filling out forms or typing data into systems. This is where AI helps: It takes on repetitive tasks so we can focus on strategy and human connection. For us, it’s never about replacing people, it’s about empowering them.

Salesforce already has a reputation for being involved with great causes, and we’re seeing that firsthand. You’re not just giving us software — you’re giving us a team of nonprofit success experts who are using volunteer hours to help us design and deploy our very first AI agents. For a small nonprofit with a lean back-office team, that’s invaluable.

Our future is about participants being able to sign up, explore programs, confirm, and book at our accessible lodge with humans and AI agents working together. Imagine a parent registering their child for a program online quickly and easily, without ever needing to pick up the phone. But if they do want to call us, we’re still here, and we’ll always answer.

The reality is, participants increasingly expect to be able to do everything online. Now they can. Salesforce is what’s going to help us meet that expectation while staying true to our mission. It’s what will allow us to bring NAC’s transformative experiences to more people with disabilities. That’s our real impact. And if you’re reading this and know someone who could benefit from joining the #AdaptiveNation — spread the word.