How One22 Is Using Salesforce to Quickly Respond to COVID-19
One22 is a nonprofit based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming that seeks to create one thriving and diverse Greater Teton Community. One22 works to achieve this mission by investing in and supporting those in their community who face health, financial and cultural challenges.
The Teton region is one of the most economically disparate regions in the United States. People living in this region are largely employed in low-wage occupations and have little to no emergency savings. One22 helps to meet critical community needs by providing resources to local families to assist with challenges related to childcare, immigration, language access, and financial relief.
Due to COVID-19, major winter events in the Teton region – which employ community members – were canceled. As a result, many of One22’s newly unemployed constituents, plus a large number of new families suddenly facing financial precarity, turned to them for resources. One22 had to rapidly shift its focus to help the highest number of families possible.
The Problem
Many donors made monetary contributions to supplement One22’s financial relief program after learning about how many people in the Greater Teton region were economically affected by the pandemic. The surge in donations and a growing donor base meant One22 needed to find a way to quickly get the money from the donors to the families who needed it the most. Knowing that some families they serve wouldn’t qualify for stimulus checks, and others were stuck waiting on a response from backed-up unemployment agencies, a fast and efficient solution was needed.
The past system would not be efficient enough to process the amount of money it had received or the number of applications it expected. The old financial relief process was set up to distribute roughly $150,000 over a year. The new system would need to process over $2 million in less than two months.
The Response
By the time the Greater Teton community was affected by COVID-19, One22 had been using Salesforce for about a year, and one of Idealist Consulting’s Salesforce experts was working with them to support their Salesforce needs. In response, both the consultant and One22 were able to immediately shift focus and come up with a solution that would get families the funds they needed.
That solution came in the form of a Salesforce app that would use Formstack to handle the financial relief applications and check request forms. They would also optimize Salesforce to communicate with families by sending them emails to notify them of their award. To help the wave of work that came in, One22 hired additional staff to help make sure everything ran smoothly. “We were building an airplane while flying it,” is how Carey Stanley, Director of Programs, described the moment.
With the new Salesforce app, intakes that used to take up to an hour to process were now done in 15 minutes. Because everything is run through Salesforce, One22 can now keep track of households, and prioritize those that need the most help. Using Salesforce also allows them to follow-up with families and provide other resources that include programs to help with negotiation and language access.
The Results
By streamlining the application process in a short period, One22 quickly processed over 3,000 applications and distributed over $2 million to about 2,000 families. The quick response from One22 and the consultant filled a gap that the CARES Act couldn’t, and quickly helped families who didn’t have the time to wait for a stimulus or unemployment check. "There was no way we would've been able to respond without Salesforce," said Stanley.
Now that they have successfully distributed the donations to the community, One22 plans to focus on how they can help them in the long term by using Salesforce to assess household needs to then follow up with them and offer other useful resources.
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