Brandwonden Stichting

Every year, tens of thousands of people visit their doctor with burns caused by household accidents – not to mention the thousands of more serious incidents requiring hospital treatment and rehabilitation.

But burns can lead to more than just physical scarring. The emotional impact of this type of injury can be huge, and self-confidence can plummet. Brandwonden Stichting understands the impact that burns can have on an individual, and it actively campaigns to raise awareness of the hazards that can lead to burns, as well as offering support for patients, and investing in research to find better ways to treat them.

Brandwonden Stichting is a Dutch NGO funded by individual and business donors, as well as door-to-door collections. It has a network of around 60,000 volunteers, in addition to 40 employees, and 30,000 donors.

To optimise efficiency and unlock richer insights across the organisation, Brandwonden Stichting needed to take data out of spreadsheets and centralise it on a single, user-friendly platform.

“Everything was done manually or on paper, which was very time consuming and costly,” recalled Bas de Boer, Head of Communications and Fundraising at Brandwonden Stichting. “We wanted to harness the power of technology to help volunteers manage contacts, plan their routes better, and help our team create more personalised marketing journeys and track the impact of donations to report back to our donors.”

Working with implementation partner, Bluedesk CRM, Brandwonden Stichting implemented Salesforce in 2017 to create a unified view of data and increase efficiency by automating time-consuming manual processes. This has freed up staff to focus on more satisfying and valuable tasks. “Bluedesk CRM’s honest guidance was invaluable to help us get the most from the platform. The team also provided comprehensive training, which helped to optimise user adoption,” said de Boer.

Today, Sales Cloud captures a unified view of supporters, including data on donors, volunteers, and insights from the company’s webshop.

To keep sensitive data secure, permissions ensure that employees and partners can only access the data they need to perform their roles. This is particularly important to protect the privacy of the 1,000 beneficiaries who receive support for their burns.

Automating Critical Emergency Programmes

Sales Cloud data helps to streamline everything from programme management to marketing. “One of the programmes we run for medics is called Emergency Management of Severe Burns. With Salesforce, we automated the entire journey, from sign up to onboarding, accessing course documents and test scores, and finally receiving a diploma,” said Aardie Novin, Data Application Programmer.

With these time-consuming processes automated, the course can now be run by just one member of staff, which gives the organisation more resources to devote to mission-critical activities. This amounts to a time saving of between 50-70%.

Sending Targeted Communications

As for marketing campaigns, in addition to building bespoke journeys on Marketing Cloud, data insights are used to ensure that the right communications are sent to the right people at the right time. This also helps to ensure people attending events have a good experience – for example, staff can check the guest list to make sure no one has an injury that would exclude them from participating in activities during the event.

The team is also planning to use CloudPages, a Marketing Cloud application that simplifies publishing targeted content across multiple channels and tracks engagement. “People want to see the impact their donation has had. By capturing that data in Salesforce, we can show people the programmes they’re funding. CloudPages is a great way to make sure we target the right donors with that information,” added de Boer.

To support the 2,000 volunteers who help vulnerable people to install their smoke alarms, Brandwonden Stichting uses Experience Cloud and an AppExchange app called Geopointe.

There are also 2,500 volunteers managing a team of more than 60,000 people who collect money door-to-door and log donations in an AppExchange solution called CollecteKracht.

Staff can now create their own ‘neighbourhood’ for volunteers in the portal using postcodes. Volunteers can then log in and plan the most efficient route, order marketing materials, and update their contact address or registration status without having to contact the Brandwonden Stichting team.

Keeping the human experience at the heart of operations, a team of three employees and eight remote employees use Service Cloud to track and respond to issues. The cloud solution means the team can work seamlessly with complete visibility of who is handling which case to eliminate duplicate effort. Being able to offer flexible positions to volunteers is crucial in a competitive market, especially in line with changing expectations in a post-pandemic landscape.

With Salesforce, Brandwonden Stichting can focus on having a greater impact on its overall mission – keeping people safe from hazards and improving the lives of those living with scars.

“Salesforce helps us save a lot of time and [that] means we can stretch our resources further. We’ve also swapped chaotic spreadsheets for secure, flexible CRM and actionable insights,” said de Boer.

The organisation can now build stronger relationships with individual and business donors. Being able to make the connection between giving money and the impact it has on real people is crucial for securing repeat funding.

Project leaders can also pull reports based on real-time data to make smarter decisions. “Because of the number of variables involved in a burns accident, we can’t always measure the impact of our campaigns,” explained Novin. “One campaign that did have amazing results was around carbon monoxide safety. We could see a direct correlation to increasing sales of carbon monoxide detectors in our online store – 50% of homes in the Netherlands now have one.”

As the organisation looks to the future, it’s planning to deploy Salesforce more broadly across the business to unlock 360-degree visibility. “Salesforce is constantly evolving and improving. If you’re just starting out with the platform, define a clear starting point but keep an open mind – there are always new and better features to help nonprofits deliver more value to the people on the ground,” concluded de Boer.

Brandwonden Stichting is on a mission to help citizens of the Netherlands minimise their risk of serious burns and provide support to people living with potentially life-changing injuries. It works closely with government organisations, specialist hospitals, research centres, and the fire brigade to help prevent fires and fund research into better ways to prevent and treat burns.