Hopeworks ‘N Camden
Hopeworks ‘N Camden helps Camden youth realize their dreams by using Salesforce
Camden, New Jersey is one of America’s poorest cities, with nearly 50% of youth living in poverty, and drop-out rates as high as 70% in some public high schools. Hopeworks is a youth development organization that provides programs to improve the lives of inner city Camden youth. At the heart of Hopeworks’ program is technology training – Hopeworks trains youth in website design, geographic information systems (GIS), computer networks & repair, video, and Salesforce. These technology programs help out-of-school and in-school youth develop skills to improve their job prospects.
After attending Dreamforce in 2007, Hopeworks founder Father Jeff Putthoff made the decision to migrate all of their youth program data from Excel and Access into Salesforce. Today, student enrollment, attendance, and projects are all tracked in Salesforce, and teachers have full visibility to student progress. In fact, they have seen a 10-15% increase in youth opportunities. They are now able to identify more opportunities, be more responsive, and monitor and stay in touch with donors, clients, youth, and volunteers in a way they never could previously.
“We are doing things we never would have done before, things that are becoming de rigeur,” says Father Puthoff. For example, they can now track a set of donors and identify the most relevant campaign message and timing. Being attuned to donors has resulted in more successful campaigns and giving. Youth are even tasked with projects that are tracked in Salesforce and are rewarded points that can be applied to buy bus passes or headphones when they complete milestones. Adding gamification to the training programs motivates the youth to perform and to compete with each other, in teams or against personal goals. As a result, they now have more youth advancing further and deeper into the program.
In addition, Hopeworks has deployed Chatter to enable employees, youth, the board and finance committee to collaborate. By sharing documents and ideas over Chatter, meetings are no longer about sharing; they are about decision-making and action. Finally, Hopeworks uses Salesforce’s mobile capabilities to access key data and dashboards from mobile devices.