St. Anthony Foundation

St. Anthony Foundation has supported homeless and low income San Franciscans for over six decades. An anchor in the community, St. Anthony’s provides many different services: hot meals served in its iconic dining room, clothing, medical care, addiction recovery, technology training and supportive social work. While the organization has a professional staff that run these programs, they rely heavily on dedicated volunteers to make this work happen every day.

But what was missing was a centralized place that staff from any department could access as they worked to coordinate all of the volunteers delivering these services. “Every day, we’re sending 40 volunteers to the kitchen, 12 to the clothing program, and 15 to the dining room,” explains Angelina Cahalan, manager of the Social ACTion Program at St. Anthony’s. “There was a lot of back and forth done via email and paper and we simply needed to have all our volunteer coordination in one place.”

St. Anthony’s and Nonprofit Success Pack

St. Anthony’s turned to the Salesforce.org Nonprofit Success Pack to manage its entire volunteer program, from individuals to large groups that come in as part of corporate volunteer programs, all in one shared system.

“There’s not a lot of volunteer software that is built for tracking groups,” says Cahalan. “Since we started using Salesforce, our program has become so much more professional and organized. Our staff work better as a team because they have this tool to run this program together.”’

St. Anthony’s also recognized the need to meet volunteers where they are today, and that means going digital. With Salesforce integrated to their website, volunteers can sign up for shifts online, cancel shifts, see all their history and the total number of hours they’ve served. “In the first year we implemented Salesforce and activated the website, our first-time volunteers doubled,” explains Cahalan. “We are able to reach new folks that might not come in if they had to schedule their volunteering over the phone or email.”

Now, St. Anthony’s staff always know which days and activities need more volunteers, so they can focus recruiting efforts. “We can offer so much more support to staff in the various departments because we know what’s happening in each program in real time,” says Cahalan. With easily customizable fields in the Nonprofit Success Pack, each program’s staff tracks the metrics they care about, like how many people each month are volunteering for the first time, what percentage are return volunteers, and what percentage hasn’t come back and needs to be re-engaged. “Now that we have this data, we are looking to expand more of our marketing functionality so we can build stronger relationships and retain more volunteers,” says Cahalan.

When St. Anthony’s expanded recently, their Dining Room grew in size by 40% and many more volunteers were needed. The organization depended on Salesforce to manage this influx, and continues to trust Salesforce as their programs grow. “Our whole volunteer program has moved off paper and is completely automated now,” says Cahalan. “Now staff can put their valuable time into building relationships with volunteers and delivering services to clients, versus paperwork.”

St Anthony’s and “Becoming Salesforce”

Giving back is core to the Salesforce culture. In fact, volunteering is part of every new employee’s “Becoming Salesforce” orientation. St. Anthony’s is one of Salesforce.org’s key partners for this program in San Francisco. New Salesforce employees help prepare and serve meals in the St. Anthony’s Dining Room or sort donated clothing in the Free Clothing Program. St. Anthony’s is also a popular destination for employee team volunteering, as they can accommodate larger groups. Salesforce employees have volunteered close to 9,000 hours with St. Anthony’s.