Big Brothers Big Sisters of America

Since 1904, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) has been driven by a simple yet profound idea – the power of a single human relationship to spark positive change. “Our mission is to create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth,” says Adam Vasallo, BBBSA’s Chief Development Officer.

That clarity of purpose has led the nonprofit through over a century of steady growth. In the last decade alone, they’ve served more than 2 million youth, across all 50 states. Currently, about 135,000 kids (“Littles”) are matched with adult mentors (“Bigs”) in ongoing relationships that, says Vasallo, “really focus on helping young people achieve their brightest possible future.”

For an organization that’s always prided itself on face-to-face interactions – meetings between matched Bigs and Littles usually take place in parks and zoos, at schools and in workplaces – COVID-19 was “an unprecedented threat to our mission,” says Vasallo. “We had 135,000 existing relationships to support, 30,000 kids on a waiting list – and, almost overnight, our matches had zero safe sites for meeting. Schools and offices and parks and community centers were closed.

“Suddenly, it was urgent to keep our matches socially close, but physically distant. Obviously, technology offered solutions – but we had no time to waste in deploying them.”

In 2019, BBBSA had already partnered with Saleforce.org with the aim of becoming a “connected nonprofit” – using platforms like Experience Cloud for Nonprofits and Marketing Cloud to better communicate with diverse constituents, and better collaborate among internal departments (programs, operations, fundraising) at its national office and 240 local agencies.

With Marketing Cloud, BBBSA can send emails to newly registered Bigs, welcoming them and letting them know the next steps to take. They are currently working on building more of these journeys, specific for volunteers, and donors, which will help to automate and personalize their communication.

By utilizing these automated journeys, they expect to save 20 hours monthly by automating processes and reminders, for example asking Bigs to complete a background check. When the pandemic hit, they were relieved to discover that the same Salesforce tools could help preserve – and even enhance – their core mission of one-to-one mentorship.

“We knew we needed to throw a life raft to save these precious relationships,” says Jarrod Bell, BBBSA’s Chief Technology Officer, “but we couldn’t just put them on a video chat and say ‘good luck.’ What differentiates us from a lot of mentoring organizations is that each of our relationships is overseen by a match support specialist, a professional who’s there to shepherd the process, to guide and advise everyone – Bigs, Littles, parents and guardians – towards achieving the youth outcome development goals that have been set, individually, for each youth.”

BBBSA’s to-do list of resource needs loomed large. They needed:

• Online training to cover video-based interactions
• Methods to report to and receive guidance from match support specialists
• Tools to keep parents and guardians involved
• A way to keep all these new digital efforts organized, accessible, secure, and on one platform
• They found all those capabilities in their own backyard – by using existing features of Salesforce’s Experience Cloud.

Within just 8 weeks, Bell and his tech team were able to customize Experience Cloud to launch a “minimum viable product” that:

• Enabled messaging between Bigs and Littles
• Access to a shared library of resources on best practices
• Oversight by match support specialists.

With an eye on the future, says Bell, “we built in a lot of feedback loops for all our constituents – Bigs, Littles, parents, guardians, our agencies across the country – for them to tell us what aspects were working, what needed improvement, what new features they were craving.”

Going forward, BBBSA will continue progressing their technology strategy, with the ultimate goal of being a fully connected nonprofit, where they can see all data, communicate with supporters, and engage with their Bigs and Littles all on one platform.

As utterly disruptive as 2020 has been, Bell sees a silver lining in the ways that circumstances have compelled his organization to embrace a far more digitally connected future. “I look at my colleagues in the nonprofit world,” he reflects, “and it’s obvious that those who’ve made strides towards digital transformation are better positioned for the future, COVID and beyond. These days, if I were at any other human services nonprofit, I’d be making a strong case to my directors and funders that this type of technology, with everyone connected on one platform, is not just an infrastructure cost, but a strategic necessity to deliver engagement and outcomes. It’s been critical to sustaining our mission – even though that mission is as simple as two people forging a relationship.”