Background
Wellspring Family Services is a nonprofit, multi-service agency serving low-income and vulnerable individuals, children and families in the Seattle area. Its mission is to end the cycle of family homelessness in the metropolitan area, and ensure that every child has a safe and stable home.
For more than 125 years, Wellspring has been a source of opportunity for children and families alike through community services in four areas: mental health, family homelessness, early learning and basic needs. Each year, Wellspring Community Services helps thousands of children and families break the debilitating cycles of instability, homelessness, and adversity to achieve positive, permanent change in their lives.
At the height of the COVID-19 crisis, Wellspring Family Services was selected by the City of Seattle to administer the distribution of a $2.17M fund targeted to aid the city’s hospitality workers who lost their jobs or income due to the pandemic. The organization was tasked with quickly bringing online an end-to-end system that was equipped to: collect applications in multiple languages, track information in a meaningful way, support the selection process of eligible applicants, and facilitate the disbursement of funds.
Wellspring Family Services reached out to DaizyLogik to help them design and implement this digital system for their needs by leveraging Salesforce CRM and the Nonprofit Cloud Case Management module.
Together, we got the $2M into the hands of people that needed it. A success from every angle – from the City of Seattle, our team, DaizyLogik’s completion, and the lives it touched.
Peter Shultz, COO, Wellspring Family Services
Agility and Forward Looking Design
For this project, Wellspring and DaizyLogik selected FormAssembly to build out the data collection portion of the project. This allowed the DaizyLogik team to build out data collection forms in 10 different languages in order to support the diverse Seattle community and reduce the language barrier for potential applicants. By using the e-signature feature built into FormAssembly, the team was able to provide an additional layer of validating eligible applicants and meet the requirements set forward by the City of Seattle.
Leveraging their expertise in both Salesforce CRM and in supporting human services organizations, DaizyLogik was able to quickly deploy and configure the Case Management module for Salesforce CRM. Our team designed additional structures needed to support the immediate needs of the hospitality program data collection with an eye for the future, taking into consideration the needs of other programs that Wellspring is currently managing or plans to manage moving forward. Using the Salesforce connector for FormAssembly, the applicant data was funneled directly into the Case Management system allowing the team to perform in-depth data analysis after the initial application process, in order to drive the funds disbursement process.
In order to ensure compliance with the funding guidelines established by the City of Seattle and fairly disburse the funds to applicants in need, the data collected had to be further scrubbed before being used for decision making. Using one of the address verification services built into the Nonprofit Success Pack, as well as a third party deduplication tool (Demand Tools), DaizyLogik helped Wellspring ensure the applicant data was accurate.
Key Takeaways
Diverse Community Support:
- FormAssembly offers translations for certain languages which provides a translation of all labels and fields on the form. For languages that are not supported by FormAssembly, DaizyLogik customized the forms with the help of Wellspring’s translators as a workaround solution.
- Dates are represented in different formats depending on the language of the form. For example, if using the Spanish version of the form a date will be collected in the format Day/Month/Year. This has to be taken into account when data is used to match applicants with existing Salesforce records. We found that the best way to collect dates is as separate Day, Month, Year fields on the form, which can be concatenated later in the FormAssembly Salesforce connector.
Consider The Audience Carefully:
- When designing data collection forms, it is crucial to carefully consider your audience and be prepared to adjust the form in response to how well respondents are able to move through the form. Due to the tight deadline for this project we did not have time to do many test runs and so we had to gauge the audience from the data we saw coming in early in the collection process. We then adjusted the language and prompts to ensure more successful form submissions. Monitoring the incoming data and building Salesforce reports around it, allowed us to respond quickly and make necessary adjustments to improve the user experience.
Expect the Unexpected:
- It’s not uncommon for various users to access data collection forms through browsers that come with various security plug-ins installed such as the Norton LifeLock plug in. These plug-ins are meant to prevent fraudulent sites from being reached, but they can sometimes report false positives. When a segment of the respondents were being blocked by the Norton plug in, we had to react quickly and submit our form url to Norton so it can be flagged as a legitimate URL and prevent future blocking.
In The Words of Our Client
We spoke with Peter Schultz, CIO of Wellspring Family Services to better understand his perspective on this project.
Q: What were your goals with regards to the hospitality workers fund project and what challenges did you most need to overcome when looking to engage with DaizyLogik?
A: During the COVID-19 crisis, The City of Seattle needed a partner to administer the distribution of a $2.17M fund targeted to aid the city’s hospitality workers who lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and chose Wellspring. Our organization was tasked with quickly bringing online an end-to-end system that was equipped to: collect applications in multiple languages, track information, support the selection process and facilitate the disbursement of funds; a large task – specifically because the The City of Seattle was trying to get the money with a low touch but high compliance effort.
The challenges were immense to accomplish in a short window of time. I knew that Salesforce Case Management was the right choice for human services tools and we had already begun transitioning to the program. It was going to be the best, most versatile tool to meet our compliance because it had all the components needed to get this implemented.
Based on the timeline – I needed someone who knew the questions that were necessary to ask. With limited staff: there was a lot that was self led by DaizyLogik, whose team fulfilled answers to questions that I didn’t even have to ask, and met at odd hours during a truly unrealistic timeline – they were very accommodating.
Q: What role does/did Salesforce Nonprofit Case Management play in helping you manage and streamline the hospitality workers program and how do you plan to expand it to other programs?
A: We are planning to expand it as we need to meet our current needs. Most of our programs aren’t Covid focused (i.e. housing programs); we look to try to get it expanded to encompass all 19 programs with the data and technology (provided by Salesforce Nonprofit Case Management) so all programs work concurrently.
Q: Were there any specific needs that you didn’t realize were necessary to manage/fulfill until you got started with Salesforce Case Management and DaizyLogik?
A: It (the project) was all educational and helped us collect useful data – the ERD matched our data needs, and the data points on the case management side met the needs of our case program – which can be used/applied to future projects.
Q: What was your experience working with DaizyLogik on the hospitality workers fund project?
A: My team felt very supported and very excited to what future projects we could Initiate with DaizyLogik. They adapted the needs of the first project to meet our future needs, and by anticipating our future needs/plans we were able to position ourselves as a team for the future. We were tasked with a most challenging task with an impossible turnaround. With my own background in Salesforce, I was familiar with the severity of the project and the need to be properly staffed. Having worked with DaizyLogik, I knew they would be my go-to for a project of this magnitude.
Q: Would you choose to engage with us again for future projects?
A: Yes definitely, without question. I picked DaizyLogik trusting that they could take on this project without a concern. When Nineta says she can do something she always includes a full return. From my previous personal experience working with her, and her reputation, choosing DaizyLogik was without a doubt my first choice. I trusted that the ground would be moved to get the program up in a week – and it was!
Q: Any additional information (specifically statistics) that you would like to include on the success of the fund and aid provided to this vulnerable demographic?
A: Together, we got the $2M into the hands of people that needed it. A success from every angle – from the City of Seattle, our team, DaizyLogik’s completion, and the lives it touched.
This project was an honor to assist with during a time of great need. We are thankful for opportunities such as these, and hope to continue to make a difference for communities in critical need.
DaizyLogik 