We often find that nonprofits underutilize Salesforce’s powerful case management features, features that can dramatically improve both the quality of your services and the productivity of your staff. This article will introduce you to cases as a general data concept, explain how your nonprofit can use Salesforce case management, and cover some basic setup guidelines.
Case as a Concept
If your nonprofit provides services to individuals, then you probably already have cases. The question is: are you intentional about them?
Cases are used to track services over a period of time. They have a start date and an end date, and during that time, you are doing things for people. Maybe you’re giving them resources, providing them counseling, or guiding them through a crisis situation.
Often nonprofits don’t differentiate between a case and a person. Each individual is its own row on a spreadsheet, with contact information and basic things that are done and steps that are taken.
But tracking data this way can be a bit inflexible, because special situations require notes, which also require a lot of brain power to read, review, and act on, all of which reduces your productivity. It can also make things hard to track, like response times, costs, and quantity of services. Finally, if a client comes back, you can end up double-counting them in major reports or writing over their old data.
Because cases have an “open” and a “close,” they are ideal for situations with repeat clients, as seen in the data model diagram below.
Rather than tracking everything within a single record, a case management model uses related records. From this, we can quickly see that John Smith is a returning client, his current case is still active, and see totals of expenses for budget allocation purposes. This all happens automatically. In a “flat” system, without case management, it would take much longer.
Salesforce Case Management
Salesforce Case management, also called “Service Cloud,” is basically a help ticketing system. That means cases are intended to be opened and closed as quickly as possible. But just because Salesforce intends something does not mean you have to use it that way.
Some cases can be opened for short(ish) periods. Our abortion funds often use cases to track requests for assistance. Someone submits an online form, saying they need help with procedural costs and getting to and from the clinic. This opens a case and alerts staff. Staff act on the case, creating “sub-records” for expenses and volunteer requests. Costs are totaled up automatically and deducted from budgets. A case for an abortion fund client can last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.
Another client of ours uses Salesforce cases for much longer periods. The Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) opens a case when they place a learner with a farmer who acts as their host and mentor. Those cases (renamed “Placements”) can last for a year. Cases come with a number of tracking features, making them ideal for quickly creating documentation the Department of Agriculture requires in its regular audits.
Basic Setup Guidelines
Every Salesforce Case has three standard fields you need to be aware of: Contact, Account, and Subject. “Contact” is the person the case is for. “Account” is the organization the person belongs to. “Subject” is the subject of the email or topic of the form that generated the case (remember, it’s natively a help ticket system).
We typically repurpose those fields, and add some of our own, depending on the situation. For instance, an “Account” may be the clinic where a patient has their appointment or the farm someone is placed at.
We also end up adding custom fields of our own, such as “Appointment Date” or “Total Practical Support” (a rollup field). What you need will depend a lot on your situation, which is what makes Salesforce Case Management so powerful: it’s flexible and can be adapted to your organization’s needs.
Conclusion
To sum up, nonprofits that provide services across time are already using cases. Using Cases in Salesforce can greatly reduce data entry time and give supervisors data to evaluate and improve processes. Keep in mind that some customization is probably going to be required. Salesforce is a great product, but it rarely works right out of the box for nonprofits. For a free initial evaluation and consultation, click here to set up a meeting.
David J. Dunn
David is the founder of Undaunted Consulting. He specializes in data management system optimization and rapid app development for social service, social justice, and environmental justice nonprofits.