The Coeliac Society of Ireland Streamlines Member Management with Salesforce

The Coeliac Society is typical of hundreds of voluntary health related charities in Ireland and has grown exponentially over the last number of years to an impressive 18,000 strong membership today! To manage this growth and provide increased value to its members, the organisation made the decision to update their IT system and chose Salesforce as their CRM.

Salesforce CRM on-demand system was a perfect fit for the needs of the Coeliac Society and a huge improvement from their previous system, which saw vital information being stored in multiple places: MS Access, spreadsheets, MS Outlook, MS Word and on mobile phones.

Helen Nzekea, Finance Manager at Coeliac Society of Ireland says “we had no integrated CRM software, we had members record in Excel and Access database which made information integrity questionable as it was prone to corruption. Also we had reduced reporting capability and communications to our members via email was restrictive and time consuming.”

The central administration at Coeliac Society manages information on members, support groups, regional groups, manufacturers, donors and officers. They also manage a range of services including the Annual AGM, Biannual Conferences, Regional Meetings, Regular Publications and Sales of Products related to the coeliac condition.

Working with Salesforce partner and technology charity, ENCLUDE, all of the organisation’s data relating to its members and activities was migrated to their new CRM. The events were listed and a payments section allowed contacts to register for events, pay membership and purchase items.

One of the Coeliac Society’s favourite features of Salesforce is the powerful reporting functionality that allows staff to generate the information they need, as they need it. Daily, weekly and monthly payment lists categorised by contact and item/event were important. A report on lodgements, grouping items as required by the Treasurer, saves hours of work each month.

“We now have a single robust database of 18,000 records with extensive reporting capacity and we are able to send tailored emails as well as targeted information to meet our member’s needs,” says Helen.

Two on-site training days facilitated by ENCLUDE served to get staff comfortable with their new CRM and offered an opportunity for usability testing and feedback. Following this session Mail Merge was introduced making life easier for all users of the Coeliac Society’s Salesforce CRM.

The Coeliac Society has just gone live with the ENCLUDE integrated two-way SMS for Salesforce CRM. The system allows sms communication with contacts, single text, group text and event reminder text, directly from Salesforce records. Replies to text are added to the same record, with a reminder sent to the user who instigated the text by email and/or sms.

POWER OF US

The Coeliac Society is accessing Saleforce through Salesforce.org Power of Us program. Eligible nonprofits receive 10 donated Salesforce licenses and deep discounts on additional licenses on this program.

Interested in joining 25,000 nonprofit organisations around the world using Salesforce? Get started here: Power of Us