The Perfect Match – BBBS Israel Pro Bono

Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Israel (BBBS) is part of a 113 year old international organisation that empowers children and teens by providing them with individual attention and support through a meaningful, positive relationship with an adult volunteer.

When BBBS Israel matches volunteers with young people they take time to ensure that the right volunteer (big brother/sister) is paired with the right boy or girl (little brother/sister). They know that this makes the difference between a successful long term engagement and an unsuccessful one. And this successful engagement can mean that the young person not only has a childhood they deserve, but also means that their future life is open to many more possibilities.

The same thing can be said for a pro bono project – when the best match is made, it can wholly transform an organisation. This was the case when Chen Cohen from Salesforce took on her first pro bono project with BBBS Israel last year.

The Perfect Match

When Chen was introduced to BBBS, their employees were barely logging into Salesforce once per week. Today, employees log in every day! Dorit Weshler, Director  of Programming at BBBS Israel says: “We can’t even imagine what life would be like without Salesforce now. It’s the first thing we open when we arrive into work.”

Chen and Dorit

Chen was introduced to Dorit through a mutual acquaintance at Salesforce, and over a period of 10 months, worked closely together to develop a much more integrated, transparent system at BBBS Israel, that removes much of the manual work and enables Dorit and her team to monitor, measure, and easily report on their programs. “She revolutionized our system,” says Dorit.

“Today, we couldn’t imagine working without Salesforce.”

BBBS Israel has grown significantly in the past 4 years from 3 branches to 15 across the country and has many goals over the next few years; to increase the number of centres to 20 across Israel and to impact an additional 300 young people, and probably the most important – to extend the relationships of its volunteers and the connection they have with their little brothers/sisters. They understand that in order to supply the best service to their volunteers the organization needs to work efficiently and professionally without compromise.   Now, with Salesforce, they can see on both a national and at a branch level, how long an average relationship is, and dig deeper to find out how they can work to extend these. They also have the opportunity to track back on their data over the past 10 years, to give them a full view of what’s been happening.

“Today I’m confident about our data,” says Dorit. “When I run reports, I know that the data is correct and I can share this with the board. Now I don’t have to call all the branch managers individually to get their data – it’s always accessible. I can easily pull together dashboards to review our data, and plan for the year ahead. It helps us to understand what we’ve done and it’s informing the decisions we make.”

With Salesforce, the volunteer experience is also improved. As Salesforce is integrated to the BBBS Israel website, volunteers can now apply to volunteer online, and that application goes straight into Salesforce so program managers can start dealing with them immediately. Before, only successful applicants details were being tracked, now, the team has full visibility of every applicant, which means that duplication never happens. “The entire lifecycle of the volunteer is managed in Salesforce, saving us so much time,” says Dorit.

Chen with the BBBS Israel team

Dorit is excited about Salesforce and the future of BBBS Israel, and attributes much of this to her engagement with Chen. “She took the time to learn everything about us and became like a staff member here, working evenings and weekends. Now, we tell everyone we meet about our Salesforce system – we feel so proud about it, it puts us a level above other nonprofits.”

Mobile is also an important feature which Chen introduced to  BBBS Israel. “When social workers are out in the field, it’s important for them to be able to easily access and update details on their clients in real time. All the staff have the Salesforce App – it makes doing our job so much easier.”

Chen worked with BBBS over a period of 10 months, offering her knowledge and skills pro bono. She also organised volunteer developers to assist with the project. At Salesforce, all employees receive 56 volunteer hours which they can use to work with organisations and causes they care about. Read more about our pro bono program here >>