Villa Pardoes
Villa Pardoes gives families with sick children an unforgettable holiday, with the help of Salesforce
Ten-year-old Lotte has leukaemia, and her regular chemotherapy treatments leave her feeling tired and depressed. Battling the illness is tough on her family too, but a fantastic week away with her parents, grandparents, and best friend at Villa Pardoes gave her the chance to enjoy being a child again, while the team discreetly ensured her medical needs were met.
Villa Pardoes helps the families of four to 12-year-old children with life-threatening conditions to make wonderful memories by offering them a free holiday in Kaatsheuvel, The Netherlands. With the Efteling theme park just next door, children can take part in a wide range of activities or simply relax with their families in one of 12 luxury holiday homes.
“These children are living with serious medical conditions,” said Leonique Rijnen, Guest Coordinator at Villa Pardoes. “Salesforce helps us to give them the chance to have a break from everyday life and have the holiday of a lifetime.”
Keeping the Villa booked 50 weeks a year.
The resort is run by a core staff of nine people, with additional support from 220 volunteers acting as gardeners, chauffeurs, hosts, administrators, and fundraisers, who welcome up to 600 families to Villa Pardoes every year.
But after 20 years of keeping paper records, the charity decided to digitalise guest services to help improve efficiency, and help keep the resort fully-booked for at least 50 weeks of the year. Both the application process – which involves qualifying leads and getting comprehensive medical contacts before the team can send an invite – and fundraising have been transformed with Salesforce. “We have to account for where money is going and be able to identify potential shortfalls in donations before it becomes an issue,” said Chantal Frijters, Fundraiser at Villa Pardoes.
Processing applications faster.
With support from partner Acuity, Villa Pardoes implemented and customised the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) in 2019. Now, when the villa receives an application with all the medical requirements completed, it can approve the application in just one day instead of four weeks. “By combining Salesforce with a smarter qualification process, families don’t have to wait so long for a decision,” explained Rijnen. “It’s great that we can send invites out so much faster, and there’s less paperwork involved too.”
With a wealth of sensitive medical data on its systems, Salesforce helps Villa Pardoes keep vital information secure and up-to-date so staff can contact the right medical professional for each child. They also use the Docomotion app from the AppExchange to simplify creating documents and capturing signatures, for example, when families give permission to share medical data from their doctors with the medical board. The fundraising team also use it to speed up the creation of thank you letters.
Building stronger relationships with better donor management.
With NPSP, the team can register, maintain, and track different types of donations through channels including fundraising events and the website. The platform also has a customisation that helps it to collect outstanding donations. “We now have a better overview of donations and the forecast, along with reports on funds received, donors, and the different types of organisations we’re approaching,” said Frijters. “It’s important that we have an overview of the upcoming year so we can make predictions more easily and meet our targets. We’ve not missed one yet!”
When the team logs a new donor, the entire journey is tracked, including phone and email conversations, to help staff have more informed conversations and to give the donor a seamless experience. Building long-term relationships is particularly crucial for the large, regular donors, such as the 10 companies who have been donating regularly for the last decade. Repeat donors are invited to a fun evening to make pancakes at Villa Pardoes so they can spend time with some of the guests, meet the volunteers, and get an update on how their money is being spent.
A platform for future innovation.
Although it’s still early in its Salesforce journey, Villa Pardoes is getting smarter and aligning more processes every day. The next stage of the project is to use NPSP to register, manage, and track more aspects of guests’ visits. For example, each apartment has facilities for different medical needs, and managing allocations via Salesforce will make it quicker and easier to place guests. “Not every apartment is fit for every family. Some are optimised for wheelchair users for example; it’s crucial to match the right families with the facilities they need,” explained Rijnen.
The nonprofit has also built a new app to help simplify bookings that allow guests to find out more about the accommodation before they arrive, to book activities during their stay, and share pictures of their experiences. This, along with the webshop, will be integrated with Salesforce to get closer to a 360-degree view of the organisation, as well as helping to streamline stock management.
Finally, the organisation plans to migrate volunteer management to the Salesforce platform to help it match people’s individual skills with vacancies and to manage personal records better.