FormAssembly Provides a Multi-Faceted Web Form Solution for Baltimore Corps

Baltimore Corps began using FormAssembly for their Fellowship Program applications, which were originally completed with Google Forms. FormAssembly’s advanced Salesforce integration met the needs of Baltimore Corps and provided a more flexible form experience.

“That was the decisive moment when we said, ‘What’s the best way that we can flexibly build different forms that we need, starting primarily with the application, but also have that data directly live in Salesforce?’” Daly said. “That was the initial use case for it and it has just exploded since then.”

Where FormAssembly helped save the most time and create the greatest impact was the application processing of the Fellowship Program.

Each fellowship application submitted to Baltimore Corps goes through a 6-step review process, where staff members assess the answers and overall skill of the applicant. After the review, they pass the application to a recruiter with their personal recommendation.

The review process now includes streamlined FormAssembly forms integrated with TaskRay, which triggers notifications to different staff members. Employees provide feedback and ratings, which are automatically synced to Salesforce.

“The two huge benefits that came out of that process were efficiency and making the process a little bit more fair and consistent,” Daly said.

In the past, application processing took several read-throughs, which could take weeks. Occasionally, there was disagreement over an applicant, but because responses weren’t recorded, there wasn’t always a way to decide whether a candidate should move on.
Moving to a “structured, form-based review process” cut out the need to review an application an unnecessary amount of times because of the simplified nature of the review questions. It also made it easier to understand the thought process behind a recommendation.

“Because employee responses were recorded in this form, we had a breadcrumb trail for their opinions about and recommendations on a candidate,” Daly said.

An additional project involved an overhaul of application processing from one long form into a user-friendly, self-guided application portal with a series of small forms. The portal displays all required forms and allows users to fill them out in any order. Contact information is prefilled to eliminate duplicate information or work on the part of the applicant.

“It has really increased conversion. It’s a lot easier to go and fill out five questions on a single section and hit submit than have that be one page of five,” Daly said.

The portal set-up has a benefit for staff as well. Because they can see what forms people have filled out and where they are in the process, it’s easier to understand what sections might be tripping people up and to reach applicants in a more targeted way.

FormAssembly has been a huge help to Baltimore Corps as they plan annual events, which have included major recognition, award, and fundraising events around the holidays.

FormAssembly is used for individual campaigns throughout the year to gather leads and interest and to collect RSVPs. It can also be used to sign people in at each event to get an accurate attendee list for post-event follow-ups and thank you notes.

“All that starts with being able to formally intake them into our system, check to see they already have a contact, and being able to put them all in one place. This way we can have a full account,” he said.

Previously, handling events required great effort and time.

“All we had was a spreadsheet, and it was sort of cobbled together through a bunch of handwritten forms. It probably took at least 30 hours of continuous work to try to merge all these different spreadsheets and input them in the system,” Daly said.