FoodCycle

“We love Salesforce and are very accustomed to using data, and FinDock aligns with that very well. We’ve built up Salesforce from scratch and made it work according to our needs. All our volunteers are managed through Salesforce and we use it to log all of our corporate donations as well. Volunteers register through our volunteer portal, which is linked to Salesforce. This then allows us to track their activity such as how many hours they have volunteered, where they volunteer, what roles they are carrying out."

- Carly Shutes, Head of Marketing at FoodCycle

FoodCycle wanted to do the same for individual donors, especially because things are changing for the organization. Carly explains, “Historically, our funding has been from big corporate partners. Four years ago, just after I joined FoodCycle, we began to look at how we might develop individual giving. So, we needed a reliable platform that would allow us to store and process all data in one place — which we have found with FinDock. We’ve only used it for a few months, and both the marketing and fundraising team are really impressed. It’s exactly what we need as we prepare to celebrate 15 years of FoodCycle and hopefully increase donations coming through the website!”

“Everything is working exactly like we need it to”

When FoodCycle decided to work with FinDock, it needed an implementation partner. The organization joined forces with Hazledene Solutions, opting for the Quick Start Package for the implementation and two additional days to build extra Giving Pages. “They were the perfect partner for us,” says Carly. “The implementation partner really understood what our charity needed to achieve, and they were incredibly knowledgeable. Every call was constructive, and the training they provided was fantastic.”

After launching the solution, Carly was understandably nervous—especially because this was a very important project and the previous platform had caused significant problems. She had prepared for issues to occur, but things have gone effortlessly. “From a project like this, you expect lots of things to go wrong or need to be tweaked or adjusted,” she says. “But in our case, everything went very smoothly. We’re almost four months in now, and everything is working exactly like we need it to. This goes to show that being a great match with your implementation partner is a significant success factor, and it’s worth investing time in finding the right one!”

“FinDock’s native Salesforce solution makes reporting on data easy”

The fact that FinDock is native on Salesforce is a huge plus for FoodCycle. Carly explains:

“Salesforce is vital to our day-to-day operations at FoodCycle, so we like having everything in Salesforce. I’m enjoying the reliability and ease of having all the data in one place. It’s also very easy to report on it. We have a dashboard that shows how many new donations we’ve set up, how much we’ve raised, and other important figures. These dashboards wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t a native Salesforce solution.. And of course, it’s great that we’ve been able to simplify the Gift Aid process. We're still figuring this process out but we're expecting it to save us a lot of time.” 

Carly also lists simplicity as a major benefit. “Being a small organization, we need something reliable that’s easy to use. That’s exactly what FinDock has provided. It’s straightforward and intuitive. For example, it’s really easy to set up a donation form using FinDock Giving Pages. There are standard templates, which we’ve customized to fit our organization. For instance, we have added a field that allows customers to indicate how they heard about us — which is good for marketing purposes. It’s great that we can do this without difficulty.”

“The reliability we’ve experienced so far is unmatched”

Overall, Carly is very happy with the solution:

“We haven’t had any reports of things failing since we’ve started using FinDock. And even though we’ve mostly organized things through our implementation partner, any direct communications I’ve had with FinDock have been great.”

When asked if she would recommend FinDock and Salesforce to other organizations, Carly doesn’t hesitate. “Definitely,” she says. “The reliability we’ve experienced so far is unmatched. This solution is the breath of fresh air we needed. It meets all our current needs, and there’s always a possibility to use more features — but whether we’ll ever need those, depends on our growth!”