Nonprofit Salesforce Portal for Document Collection: Acts Housing Case Brief
Introduction
Acts Housing, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit organization, has embraced technology to streamline its operations and enhance the client experience. By partnering with Titan, Acts Housing has transitioned from a cumbersome manual document collection process to a more efficient, user-friendly system. This article explores how Titan’s Salesforce-integrated portal is transforming document submission for Acts Housing, increasing operational efficiency and client satisfaction.
What Acts Housing Does
Acts Housing is a one-stop-shop for homeownership, offering families credit repair, budgeting, saving advice, and helping them secure preapproval for home loans. The organization provides comprehensive services, including assistance with home searches, financing options, and purchasing city foreclosed properties. They also support families in fixing up homes through rehab programs, ensuring affordability and sustainability in their communities.
The Challenge: Manual Document Collection
In a growing nonprofit organization like Acts Housing, managing documentation for homeownership programs can be overwhelming. With a staff that has expanded from a dozen to fifty over the past five years, Acts Housing faced the challenge of handling a high volume of paperwork. In Milwaukee, 80% of renters aspire to own a home, which meant that the nonprofit had to ramp up its services to meet this demand. The traditional method of manual document collection was slow and created an administrative burden.
The Solution: Salesforce-Connected Portal
Acts Housing sought a solution to simplify the document collection process while improving the client experience. The nonprofit turned to Titan, integrating a Salesforce-powered portal that allows families to easily upload documents through their mobile devices or computers. This solution gives families more control over their documentation process, allowing them to submit files directly to Salesforce, ensuring data is attached to the correct contact records.
Dee Kemp, the Vice President of Programs at Acts Housing, shared her excitement: “To have our documents directly uploaded to that contact record in Salesforce is really a game-changer.” The portal allows for quicker preapproval, reduced administrative load, and increased transparency.
The Impact: Improving Efficiency and Adoption
The integration of Titan’s portal with Salesforce has already led to significant improvements. By reducing the manual handling of documents, the administrative team at Acts Housing has seen a marked decrease in their workload, allowing them to focus on serving clients more efficiently. Kemp praised the Titan team for their responsiveness and the ease of use of the portal, which was designed based on direct feedback from Acts Housing’s developers.
“We were super excited with the quality of the work and with the responsiveness of the team,” Kemp said, highlighting the simplicity and clarity of the system.
Goals for the Future: Expansion and Scaling
Looking ahead, Acts Housing plans to expand its services beyond Wisconsin to other markets. The goal is to replicate their success and scale their operations to address nationwide housing challenges. The ability to leverage a Salesforce-integrated platform that is both reliable and easy to use will be critical in achieving this growth.
“We need customer portals, and we need to ensure ease of access for people in our markets,” Kemp emphasized. With Titan’s technology, Acts Housing can now focus on scaling its impact and ensuring that families across the nation can access the support they need.
Why CRM Adoption is Crucial for Nonprofits
Kemp acknowledged that CRM implementation in nonprofits can be difficult due to staff reluctance and the challenges of training. However, she noted that with the right tools and a strong support team, nonprofits like Acts Housing can reap the benefits of CRM systems that streamline operations and enhance service delivery.
“It takes a lot of training. It takes putting together those accountability pieces for your organization,” Kemp said, underscoring the importance of ongoing support in ensuring successful CRM adoption.
Titan’s Role in Supporting Nonprofits
Titan’s relationship with Acts Housing exemplifies how a tailored, Salesforce-first approach can benefit nonprofit organizations. By offering a portal solution that streamlines document collection, reduces administrative burdens, and integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, Titan is helping Acts Housing better serve their clients while positioning the organization for future growth.
“We love the fact that Titan has a great love for nonprofits,” Kemp shared. “I think that just makes for such a better relationship that can move you forward that much more quickly.”
Recommendation for Other Nonprofits
Dee Kemp encourages other nonprofits to explore Titan’s capabilities, especially if they are looking to improve their client portal systems. “If you’re a nonprofit, I’m definitely recommending that you at least give Titan the opportunity to show you what they can do to help you move your nonprofit forward.”
Q and A Blocks
What is a nonprofit Salesforce portal used for?
A nonprofit Salesforce portal is designed to streamline document collection, allowing clients to submit required documentation directly into the Salesforce system. It enhances the user experience and increases operational efficiency by reducing manual handling of files.
Why is manual document collection a problem for nonprofits?
Manual document collection is time-consuming, error-prone, and increases administrative workload. Nonprofits often struggle to manage a high volume of paperwork, which can delay processes like preapproval and loan applications.
What documents does a homeownership program need for preapproval?
While the transcript does not list specific documents, generally, a homeownership program needs documentation like income verification, credit reports, tax returns, and identification for preapproval. The Titan portal enables families to submit these documents directly.
What does ‘attach documents to the Salesforce contact record’ mean operationally?
This means that documents submitted through the portal are linked to the correct contact record in Salesforce, ensuring that data is stored securely and directly within the system, without needing to manually match files to records.
Why do CRM implementations fail without adoption?
CRM implementations often fail when staff members are not adequately trained or held accountable for using the system. Without adoption, the CRM becomes just another tool that doesn’t improve workflow or efficiency.
Why does mobile access matter for client portals?
Mobile access ensures that clients can easily submit documents and access their information from anywhere, which is especially important for organizations serving a diverse population that may not have consistent access to desktop computers.
What should the first 60 days of portal rollout focus on?
The first 60 days should focus on integrating the portal with Salesforce, addressing any technical issues or bugs, and ensuring that the staff is properly trained to use the system effectively.
Why vendor responsiveness matters in nonprofit implementations?
Vendor responsiveness is critical in nonprofit implementations because nonprofits often operate with limited resources and tight timelines. A responsive vendor ensures that issues are addressed quickly, minimizing downtime and ensuring a smooth rollout.
Transcript
Speaker 1
Everybody thinks that tech is a magic pill and you want everything right now. So when the people that you work with are just as excited about the work that you’re doing, I think that just makes for such a better relationship that can move you forward that much more quickly.
My name is Dee Kemp. I’m the Vice President of Programs for a nonprofit organization called Acts Housing. At Acts Housing, we’re a one-stop-shop for home ownership. So we help families get ready for home ownership through credit repair, helping you get on a great budget and save so that you can position yourself for sustainable home ownership.
Our goal through that process is to get you preapproved. Once you’re preapproved, we have a full real estate brokerage that actually walks you through the process of finding a great home that meets your needs. Once you’ve found that home, if you weren’t able to get a traditional bank loan, we are able to provide financing as well. And we also help people purchase city foreclosed properties so they can buy a property and fix it up and make it livable again.
We’ll help them with a scope of work to get through that process. We love to make sure our families don’t leave any money on the table, so we will help find down payment assistance if you’re qualified for that or based on where you’re moving. And finally, because of landlords coming into the community and buying up properties to make them permanent rentals, we have decided to buy properties and make them available for home ownership after we rehab them at prices we know the families that we work with can afford.
We use the nonprofit success pack, so we’ve built on that with a variety of things that are trying to to help us become more efficient and get more work done. In Milwaukee, where we’re based, eighty percent of families who are renters wanna be homeowners. So we need to ramp up and be able to serve the volume of people who really do want home ownership, and they just need that extra assistance and resources because it’s not a process that you’re taught about in school.
I think implementation of any CRM is painful. People don’t wanna change. People don’t immediately realize the benefits. It takes a lot of training.
It takes putting together those accountability pieces for your organization so that people are almost forced to start using these things that ultimately will make their job easier. We’ve also been in a growth phase over the past five years. We’ve gone from a dozen staff to a staff of fifty. So it’s been really important to build out systems that are transparent, that help everyone see what’s going on, understand what’s going on so that we can provide great service to the families.
I am so excited about our relationship with Titan. It is gonna allow us to have a portal that helps families submit the documentation we need to get them to preapproval or to get that loan or to get that down payment assistance. Right now, it’s a very manual process. So, really putting the control in the hands of the families to get us that information in a format that’s simple, understandable, comes across great on your mobile phone or your laptop or whatever device you’re using is gonna be so exciting for us. We just signed a contract, so I am thrilled and so excited, particularly for our administrative team, to see how much this takes a load off of them. To have our documents being directly up to that contact record in Salesforce is really a game-changer.
I will say first, you guys have an amazing service team and everybody thinks that tech is a magic pill and you want everything right now to work. So I would say super responsive and then coming to us with a great layout just based on conversations they had had with our developer. And it was so simple, so easy to use. Like, I feel like everybody’s gonna be able to understand it. So we were just super excited with the quality of the work and with the responsiveness of the team.
Goals over the next couple of months is definitely to just integrate it with our Salesforce instance and get folks using it, working through with the team, any bugs and things that come up. So I’m super excited about that. Long term, the work that we do, we’re only in Wisconsin right now, but we do have aspirations of growth into other markets because the issues that we address are national problems. So being able to have a package, a Salesforce instance that really sets people up for success, that’s tried and true and tested, I’m really excited about that. And I think that Titan is gonna be a huge part of that. We need customer portals. We need to ensure ease of access for people in our markets.
You guys have a great love for nonprofits. I’ve enjoyed so much, conversations with your team just about our work and what we do. So when the people that you work with are just as excited about the work that you’re doing, I think that just makes for such a better relationship that can move you forward that that much more quickly. So if you’re a nonprofit, I’m definitely recommending that you at least give Titan the opportunity to show you what they can do to help you move your nonprofit forward.
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