Missoula Food Bank’s Salesforce Implementation
T he Missoula Food Bank is a staple of our community. The Food Bank provides well over one million pounds of food per year to nearly twenty thousand of our friends and neighbors. The organization works its magic through initiatives like the ROOTS Program for Seniors, Kids EmPower Pack Program, and their store front location.
Undertakings of this size aren’t easy. They require a large amount of coordination, dedication, and perhaps most importantly, information. The Food Bank relies heavily on information detailing donations, volunteers, and clients to make sure it’s serving the people of Missoula to the best of its ability.
This is where ATG comes in. The Food Bank contacted ATG’s Philanthropy Committee requesting guidance on how to implement Salesforce (a customer/client management system). The Food Bank wanted to adopt Salesforce as a single access point for client information, volunteer management, donation tracking, and event coordination.
"I really enjoyed having the opportunity to translate my professional skills to help others in the Missoula Community," said Asia Caluori. "ATG prides itself on supporting the local community and this project was a clear testament to that!"
ATG donated the time of a team of consultants with Salesforce experience to design, build, and launch the Food Bank’s new Salesforce environment. The team worked closely with members of the Food Bank’s staff to identify what data needed tracking in the new platform, what data required migration from existing spreadsheets and databases, and how to make the user experience as intuitive as possible.
The Food Bank now has access to an assortment of apps that track donations, client visits, volunteer hours, and event sponsorships. The new suite of technology ATG helped implement will help the Food Bank increase their impact in Missoula in a couple of ways. Firstly, by making data management more efficient, the Food Bank can focus more time on their clients. Increased hours mean the Food Bank can help more Missoulians daily. Secondly, access to volunteer management tech allows the Food Bank to recruit, organize, and assign volunteers in a more efficient manner. As a result, the Food Bank can lend more support to its most important programs.
This project asked ATG to step way outside of its normal comfort zone. We normally work with large companies interested in robust technology transformations. The systems we work with are designed to optimize sales processes and clarify billing practices. We rarely get a chance to work on something that directly impacts our community.
The collaboration with the Missoula Food Bank allowed ATG to re-affirm its commitment of one of our core values: People First. ATG doesn’t exist solely to reduce stress for people in sales or finance departments at tech giants across the globe. Instead, we try to use our professional abilities to help improve our community. The project was a fun and unique volunteer opportunity for those at ATG who worked on it. It offered a chance for ATGers to experience personal growth and community impact.
ATGer Asia Caluori helped in the beginning days of this project.
Providing this sort of technical support to the Food Bank allowed ATG to provide technical knowledge to make their day to day activities quicker and more effective, allowing employees to focus on the people they serve.
The Food Bank’s new system for customer management launched successfully on June 1, 2018. Volunteer and Donor data will follow with launches scheduled for later this summer. That means the Food Bank will be able to track information regarding their clients, donations, partner organizations, and volunteers in a more efficient manner. The increased efficiency enables the Food Bank to increase their community outreach events and serve more members of the Missoula community.
Rebecca Miller is a Marketing Specialist in ATG's Overland Park office. She joined ATG in 2018 and her favorite aspect of ATG is the people. She enjoys having the opportunity to write about them and promote ATG's amazing culture.
