Housing Choices
“
Patrick’s an invaluable asset to us – I don't think we would be the organization that we are today without him. He’s amazing in terms of digging in and understanding our needs and figuring out how Salesforce can accomplish all that with the least aggravation for all involved.
Jan Stokley
Executive Director
“
Bringing our quarterly report process into Salesforce has saved a huge amount of time – about 30 hours per quarter—that’s almost a full month each year! Before we were searching through Google Drive, doing everything manually. Now, with a few clicks, I can access all the information and know what’s been completed, what’s waiting for manager review, etc.
Dennise Jauregui
Program Director
ORG LOCATION
San Jose, CA
TYPE OF SERVICE
Housing Services
STAFF SIZE
~70
FAVORITE FEATURE
Centralizing Client Information
Housing Choices needed a database to track a lot of information
Before Salesforce, a single client would have different points of information spread out in many different places – our old database, Google Docs, Excel spreadsheets, paper documents, emails. Now with Salesforce it's all integrated and that's hugely beneficial to us in terms of staff happiness and effectiveness, better internal controls, better review, better monitoring, and more timely information about how we're doing.
JAN
Housing Choices helps individuals and families with developmental disabilities find and retain affordable housing. Navigating affordable housing opportunities is challenging and requires gathering and documenting a ton of background information for each client. All this information is then synthesized and packaged into an individual plan for each client. And along the way, staff are making case notes for each moment spent working on a client’s case.
So assisting over 2,400 clients annually means managing a lot of information, not to mention documenting the 250,000+ separate case notes that staff generated that make up the bulk of Housing Choice’s data on invoices and payroll.
The most flexible, robust, and affordable database option
In 2018, Housing Choice’s board tasked Jan Stokley, Executive Director, to research database options because their database was underperforming. When looking at database options, it became clear that the “out-of-the-box” programs designed for case management were both too expensive and not versatile enough for Housing Choice’s needs.
The board eventually chose Salesforce not only because it was the least expensive (nonprofits are given 10 free Salesforce licenses as well as a discount on all additional licenses), but also because it could be tailored to fit Housing Choice’s unique needs around client information, time tracking, reporting, and ease of creating alerts and warnings.
Immediate improvements with centralization of client data and automatic reminders
One of the big improvements we’ve seen with Salesforce is around tracking different kinds of due dates. For example, staff are tasked with creating a housing plan for each new client within 60 days, but this is much easier said than done. So we have built in alerts that remind staff of upcoming due dates like this.
JAN
Upon adoption of Salesforce, Housing Choices was seeing a ton of improvements in many areas. Staff liked having a centralized system where they could find all the info they needed quickly and easily. Managers liked being able to easily review their staff members’ work. Housing Choices leadership and administrative team loved the days of work they were being saved each month – reports that used to take hours or days of sifting and combining spreadsheets, now could be created within seconds.
Salesforce has also been really helpful for Housing Choices in increasing accountability and transparency of their results. Before Salesforce, they either couldn’t get that kind of data because they didn't have a way to track it, or compiling data from many different sources would take forever. They can now answer questions about who they're serving, how they're serving them, and what difference they're making. And it enables them to do needs assessment grounded in the actual demand for their services – amongst many different geographies and demographics.
Housing Choices continues to build out a tailored database
Fortunately, with databases, not everything has to be done at once. Housing Choices started with the core of what they needed in terms of client information, time tracking, and reports. But over the past few years, they’ve been bringing more and more processes into Salesforce. One example is utilizing Salesforce's reporting capabilities to better understand how to support staff in their training and development. Recently, Housing Choices has been using Salesforce to provide meaningful feedback on their work.
We also use Salesforce to review staff performance and give them feedback. Before, managers each had a different way of tracking this. I would meet with them and they’d say, "Oh, well I have this spreadsheet where I keep track of staff metrics this way."
Now, the metrics are automatically generated based on how many clients are currently active, how many housing plans they've created, how many housing applications they've sent. It's way more fair to staff this way. And we can check in with them about it every month: "Hey, this is where you're at and this is what’s missing." And then they can actually improve based on real data.
dennise
On working with Patrick
I've realized that we don’t always know when we need help. I’ll be thinking "Everything's going as well as possible,” but then Patrick comes in and says, “but what about this?" So it's important to have new perspectives. I hope people give themselves the opportunity to reach out and seek Patrick's perspective.
dennise
Patrick has a unique combination of digging to understand the broader situation and the broader problem, but then also being extremely detail oriented and attentive to what's actually gonna work. I think having those two qualities in the same person is rare, and that it really makes him so much more impactful. Patrick also has a high level of technical expertise and a willingness to go back and try a different approach if something's not getting us what we need. I couldn’t recommend him highly enough.
JAN
Challenges
Results
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