Nonprofit

FormAssembly Advances GiGi’s Playhouse Nonprofit Data Collection

Clare Mitchell

Chief Information Officer

Case Study Snapshot

GiGi’s Playhouse was founded as a way to address any negative assumptions that parents and families encounter after receiving a Down syndrome diagnosis. The organization’s mission is aimed at celebrating the Down syndrome diagnosis by offering free educational, therapeutic-based, and career development services to assist families with Down syndrome from prenatal diagnosis through early adulthood reach their full potential in life. Chief Information Officer, Clare Mitchell, incorporated the use of FormAssembly into the organization’s business processes. FormAssembly’s data management for nonprofits helps automate and launch a new frontier of growth and advancement.

About

Upholds the mission to change the way the world views Down syndrome and promote global acceptance for all.
Provides therapeutic, educational, and career-based resources free of charge through a community playhouse model.
Receives hundreds of community playhouse inquiries for the establishment of new centers throughout the year.

The numbers

5

Major forms in use (consolidated from 250 forms)

46

Locations in the US & Mexico

35%

Annual growth in families served

200,000+

Free program hours annually

The Need

A Lack of Real-Time Data Prevented Scalable Growth

All nonprofits struggle with volunteer recruitment, with very few solutions.

Before they reached 20 separate locations, GiGi’s Playhouse was using Donor Perfect and a system of Google spreadsheets and Access databases. Unfortunately, the sync time was slow and inefficient, and it often took over a day to coordinate new data with email marketing systems. Mitchell reported in order to truly scale, the team knew they had to make a switch to something faster and more sustainable.

The team at GiGi’s Playhouse had to face an additional issue regarding placing control in the hands of the individuals responsible for running operations at playhouse locations around the country. While it was not feasible to provide Salesforce licenses to all of these individuals, the IT team realized FormAssembly was an excellent vehicle for managing Playhouse operations and nonprofit data collection effectively.

“All nonprofits struggle with volunteer recruitment, with very few solutions,” Mitchell said.

The Solution

Transitioning to Web Forms for Nationwide Impact

[FormAssembly] is such a great way for us to give power to others.

GiGi’s Playhouse onboarded with FormAssembly at the same time the team transitioned to Salesforce. When Mitchell encountered One Goal, another nonprofit organization that was implementing FormAssembly with powerful results, she realized that there was even more potential to customize FormAssembly for specific and targeted purposes. As a result, she was able to consolidate over 250 separate online forms into 5 primary FormAssembly forms.

“[FormAssembly] is such a great way for us to give power to others,” Mitchell shared.

By using FormAssembly for Program Registration, Gathering Program Outcomes, Volunteer Interest, and Volunteer Management and other use cases, the centrally-located IT team receives fewer tickets than ever before. Instead of constantly training new individuals when turnover happens, the team can rely upon tried-and-true form systems that eliminate hassle.

Integrating to Salesforce

FormAssembly works in tandem with the Salesforce Nonprofit Starter Pack to add individual contacts into their household records, which has a helpful impact regarding duplicate management and donation tracking. In additional, FormAssembly looks for duplicate contact records to keep data clean and organized.

Prefilling to Update Records

Tools like the Prefill Connector and Conditional Logic allow anyone in charge of playhouse operations to easily select which programs are available at a given time. The ability to delegate this task to individual playhouse teams alleviates burden from primary IT staff.

Using Notifications

FormAssembly’s notification settings also allow staff to keep up with every step in the volunteer recruitment process and to track the activity for individual playhouse locations. When it comes to data management for nonprofits, having timely notifications is key to seamless processes.

Use Cases

Program Sign-Up Forms

FormAssembly powers the signup process for children and families enrolling in programs.

The primary use case for GiGi’s Playhouse involves registration for programs such as Literacy, Math, Speech, Career Education, and GiGiFit. Many separate forms have been consolidated to allow for one streamlined process. Form components include the ability to gather contact information, receive medical approval, and determine a student’s level of functioning as it relates to participation.

Program Outcome Forms

Custom URLs provide one-on-one feedback per student.

Mitchell reports the use of FormAssembly to create Program Outcome forms has been extremely successful. These forms are used to evaluate and gauge a student’s progress throughout different services. The team at GiGi’s Playhouse can send an email with a smart, prefilled link that dynamically loads a student’s information into the form.

Volunteer Signup Forms

Salesforce Dynamic Picklists elevate volunteer form capabilities.

Staff at GiGi’s Playhouse use volunteer signup forms to place control in the hands of individual playhouse locations. When volunteers go on the public website, they have immediate access to any available volunteer categories, and they can select which of those interest them. Moreover, individual playhouse locations have the ability to change the options that volunteers see per form. This feature, powered by Dynamic Picklists, is helpful when a particular role is at capacity or requires more volunteers at a given time.

Internal Administrative Forms

Staff can quickly access or sign important business documents.

While this is a new use case for GiGi’s Playhouse, the organization can leverage internal web forms to streamline administrative processes. The team currently uses FormAssembly for operating agreements and other necessary documents.

What’s Next?

GiGi’s Playhouse is just getting started when it comes to exploring what FormAssembly can do. As the organization expands to locations around the world, innovative and prefilled web forms will enable further growth and development. Mitchell reports that nearly 90% of the projects in her current pipeline can be addressed with FormAssembly solutions. New projects will involve changing over internal documents, requests, and templates to simplified web forms.

One of the organization’s unspoken core values is “get it done.” FormAssembly provides a pathway for the organization’s core team members to adhere to their values while accomplishing bigger and better goals along the way.