Mobile Loaves & Fishes

"Common Ground has helped our small organization become an extraordinary force because we now have a tool that is flexible, scalable, and web-based to consolidate data about all of our interactions with our supporters — whether they donate online, offline, a member of a truck team in Nashville, or a volunteer in Austin. We believe we’ve found the Holy Grail of data integration in Common Ground."

- Alan Graham, President, Mobile Loaves & Fishes

About Mobile Loaves & Fishes

Mobile Loaves & Fishes, Inc. (MLF) is a social outreach ministry for the homeless and indigent working poor. MLF’s mission is to provide food, clothing, and dignity to its brothers and sisters in need. The organization accomplishes its mission through the use of catering trucks and a volunteer base of almost 10,000 across five states.

The challenge

Utilized three separate databases to store constituent information; yet the systems were not integrated
Had to manually synchronize data prior to sending annual appeals or campaigns resulting in a time-intensive and error-prone process
Lacked a powerful donor management system that would integrate its disparate data and track the online and offline activities of its entire constituent base

The solution

Convio Common Ground CRM was the ideal solution because it was a powerful, web based system that could fully integrate with MLF’s existing databases
Common Ground can push information out of its volunteer, accounting and online marketing systems into Common Ground and look at individual donors or volunteers, communities, truck teams — all as isolated groups or a complete 360-degree view
The system flexibility enables the organization to see how the all of the data is related and properly segment and target individuals with effective and engaging communication methods

Results

Integrate three disparate databases that each housed important data which has eliminated manual, time-intensive processes to sync data for marketing and fundraising campaigns
Provide new views into constituents and how the organization can communicate with individual donors, groups and volunteers to make a bigger impact
Leverage social networking websites tools available on Salesforce.com AppExchange while using Common Ground as its central database