Here’s How This Nonprofit is Using Salesforce and Mogli SMS to Help College Students
Just as universities support students from freshman orientation through graduation and alumni status, Richmond Promise opens the door to higher education. This nonprofit builds a college graduating culture in Richmond, CA, by helping students in multiple stages of their journey, including financial support and mentorship.
To run successfully, Richmond Promise tracks and manages each step of a student’s involvement with the organization in Salesforce using AppExchange apps. But that wasn’t always the case.
Here’s how Jessica Rodriguez, Associate Director of Scholarships and Data, and her small but mighty team, took an administratively overburdened group and turned it into a scalable, more efficient solution for college students with Salesforce and apps.
Finding a Way to Communicate Better and Organize
Imagine using Google Voice texts to communicate with 500–700 students at a time, and then manually update Salesforce records to reflect the status of various tasks. According to Jessica Rodriguez, manual processes combined with managing student FAFSA applications was a time-consuming responsibility.
Jessica searched for a better way to track and update records in Salesforce, alleviating her team’s time investment in data entry, and allowing them to pursue other mission-critical efforts. She found Mogli Technologies, an AppExchange partner, for SMS, process, and tracking automation.
Automating Processes for FAFSA Loans and Deadlines
In 2019, Richmond Promise managed communication with over 1,000 students. To handle rapid growth, Jessica Rodriguez configured Mogli’s form template function along with Salesforce Process Builder to send automated SMS reminders to students about FAFSA deadlines. This automation also gathers inbound messages regarding progress or completion.
When the student shares that the loan application is complete via text message, their Salesforce record is automatically updated from incomplete to complete. The contact (student) record for the FAFSA completion is automatically filtered, which loops the “incomplete” record back into the automated text message campaign until the application deadline arrives.
Tracking and Managing Financial Support for Students
In addition to FAFSA support, Richmond Promise also pays scholarships in-house through a bill pay application. This scholarship is a financial transaction record that reflects on the student’s contact record in Salesforce. Any changes in the transaction history — such as when Richmond Promise sends scholarship funds to the student’s college or university — triggers a text to the student with the update. No more manual check-ins, and no more anxious students. Every step of the process is transparent to all parties.
Optimizing Student Communication and Case Management
Richmond Promise is scaling college success and career mentorship programs, with plans to double the number of graduates and students they serve within the year. Expanding these offerings also means developing their case management to handle the load.
Case management involves employees and volunteers communicating with students through one-on-one conversations, bulk-text updates, chatbot functionality, and individual text. For example, if a student’s response to a text-based survey or Chatbot indicates they need live help, process builder or flow can both auto-create a case and notify an employee or volunteer that they need to jump into the conversation to talk with the student.
Running the Businesses Using Salesforce Functionality
For Richmond Promise, college success is a representation of intersecting actions on Salesforce. They use Salesforce to:
- Check-in with students’ grades to ensure they can receive a scholarship award
- Schedule student-advisor meetings
- Student ambassadors communicate with Richmond Promise students
- Schedule bulk messages and surveys to gather student-submitted grade reports and qualitative feedback,
- Advisors hop into one-to-one conversations to schedule appointments or address students’ needs
In the future, Richmond Promise could have ambassadors send group texts to orchestrate on-campus meetings, either as users or within a Community portal. And as long as Richard Promise continues their mission of building a college graduating culture in Richmond, CA, Salesforce solutions will continue to provide support.
Check out Mogli SMS on AppExchange, and for more apps that help nonprofits worldwide, visit the AppExchange nonprofit collection.
