Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arizona is a nonprofit organization dedicated to changing children’s lives and helping them build confidence to reach their full potential. The Arizona chapter, which is a part of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, has served Maricopa, Pinal, and Gila counties for the past 65 years.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arizona offers a variety of programs and one-on-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth by matching adult volunteers, known as “Bigs,” with “Littles,” children of ages 5 through adulthood.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arizona (BBBSAZ) is one of the largest chapters of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBS), which has chapters in every state. One of the goals of each chapter is to build deep and long-lasting relationships with their adult volunteers. They know that if their Bigs are deeply engaged, participation will increase and the volunteers can be matched with Littles longer, resulting in healthy and rewarding matches.
In 2018, BBBS received a technology grant which provided an opportunity for the entire organization to move to what is internally known as Matchforce, a Salesforce application designed to coordinate and match Bigs and Littles. Each chapter, which operates individually and reports up to the main agency, utilizes Matchforce in conjunction with its preferred donation system to keep track of donors, donations, and constituents.
The Arizona chapter, which uses Salesforce for its donor management platform, was experiencing critical information gaps as data from Matchforce was not automatically reflected in their local donor Salesforce application. This created a situation where BBBSAZ had limited visibility into what the Bigs in Matchforce were doing and how that corresponded to local initiatives.
BBBSAZ began searching for a solution that would connect and sync Matchforce and its donor database to provide a real-time, 360-degree view of the agency and its volunteer relationships.
In June of 2020, BBBSAZ partnered with MST Solutions (MST), a leading Salesforce implementation and automation provider headquartered in Chandler, Arizona. “We interviewed several companies that specialized in Salesforce, and MST was the best choice. They were experienced with implementation and integrations and had worked with large nonprofit organizations like ours in the past,” said Thomas (TJ) Shull, Development Manager for BBBSAZ.
The Arizona chapter has always been on the forefront of progress, and BBBS, the national organization, sees the new connector as a positive move. “There are many other agencies interested in syncing up Matchforce with their donor database because they’re experiencing the same challenges we were,” said Shull. “I hope other chapters can model what we’ve been able to do with MST as it will make it easier for them in the future.”
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