How Ho-Chunk Housing and Community Development is bringing Payment flexibility to Tribal communities with Salesforce + FinDock.
For Tara Chapman and the team at Ho-Chunk Housing and Community Development Agency (HHCDA), the mission is clear: empower tribal families with housing support, while treating every person with the dignity and flexibility they deserve.
As both a nonprofit and a housing authority, HHCDA serves Native American families across Wisconsin through housing and holistic community development. With just 51 employees supporting over 800 families – and only three people managing tenant services for 280 housing units – the team stays sharply focused on high-impact work. Because HHCDA is entirely grant-funded, staff wear many hats: marketing, fundraising, property oversight, even software development. That means they have to be intentional about where their time goes, prioritizing tasks that directly support the community. And yet, for years, collecting rent remained a logistical and emotional burden for both staff and tenants.
“People were physically driving in rent checks. Sometimes from across the state,” Tara recalls. “Or they had to mail them in and hope it got processed on time. We couldn’t take credit cards over the phone. No online options. Just paper, envelopes, and stress.”
There was no online payment option. No flexibility. No real-time insight. And worst of all, no way for tenants, many of whom face financial hardship, to manage their payments on their own terms.
A vision rooted in empowerment
The team didn’t just want online payments. They wanted total payment flexibility for tenants. Whether someone needed to pay weekly, via payroll deduction, cover a service repair, or catch up on a rent balance, they should be able to choose how, when, and how much to pay. And do it all from one secure, mobile-accessible portal.
But that vision clashed with the operational reality. Most payment processors didn’t support the flexibility HHCDA needed. Worse, they would have required manual reconciliation, adding additional work to the load of an already overstretched team.
“I had a hard demand. Tenants must be able to pay weekly if they want to. Some tenants need to budget a little out of each paycheck instead of making one big rent payment at the start of the month. But none of the payment processors we looked at could do that. It felt like we were constantly being asked to compromise either the tenant experience or our operational sanity. I didn’t want to do that anymore. And then I saw Salesforce and FinDock working together, and I realized we didn’t have to choose.”
Why Salesforce + FinDock
HHCDA first turned to Salesforce to streamline internal operations and communication. Tara, who manages everything from Marketing to Software and Fundraising, started building a CRM to consolidate tenant data and reduce email back-and-forth between departments. But when she discovered Salesforce Experience Cloud could power tenant portals, and that FinDock could unify payments directly within Salesforce, something clicked.
“It was like the light went on,” she reflects. “I saw we could build one seamless system, where tenants could manage their payments, update their contact info, and see everything in one place. And where staff would no longer need to chase down payments or send hundreds of receipts every month.”
Before the shift, the first day of every month brought a painful ritual. “The team would spend the entire day sending receipts to all 280 tenants,” Tara explains. “It was all manual. All time-consuming. And we only had one person who could process the checks once they hit the bank. It dominated our workflow.”
Flexibility, finally realized
With Salesforce and FinDock, HHCDA’s tenants can log into their own portal and take full control over how they pay. Whether it’s rent, a service-related fee, or a one-time repair cost, the experience is:
- Flexible: Tenants can pay weekly, monthly, via payroll deduction, or in any other structure that suits their budgeting needs.
- Transparent: They can see all their balances, rent, arrears, or service costs, and choose what to pay, when, and how much.
- Accessible: Through FinDock’s integration with Stripe, tenants can use a broad range of payment methods like ACH, credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, or Apple Pay.
And the best thing? The payment flexibility doesn’t add any additional operational complexity for the HHCDA team.
Thanks to FinDock’s native Salesforce integration, payments show up in real time in the tenant’s Salesforce account. The team can see instantly if a payment went through, and if one fails, FinDock automatically sends a PayLink, giving tenants a chance to “cure” the issue before anyone has to pick up the phone.
“That automation alone is a game-changer. Before, someone had to call every person when a check bounced. Now, it’s all handled behind the scenes. FinDock just takes care of it.”
Simplifying operations. Optimizing experiences. All in one.
By using Salesforce Experience Cloud together with FinDock, HHCDA has unified their payments operations and elevated the tenant experience. What once took days (processing payments, issuing receipts, chasing down details) is now handled automatically. The team is free to focus on what matters most: supporting families, building communities, and planning for the future.
“It’s just wild how far we’ve come. We’re not a big company. We’re a small, grant-funded nonprofit. But now we can offer the kind of digital experience you’d expect from a major housing association.”
Next: donations, inventory, and beyond
Rent payments are just the beginning. The team is already planning to use Salesforce + FinDock for donation campaigns, corporate fundraising, and even inventory management. With barcodes and scanners feeding directly into Salesforce.
Because when data lives in one system, anything is possible.
The power of Payment Happiness
HHCDA’s journey shows what happens when customer experience meets operational efficiency. With Salesforce and FinDock, they’ve delivered Customer Payment Happiness, a seamless, empowering, and flexible way for tenants to pay.
More importantly, they’ve stayed true to their mission: to meet people where they’re at, and lift them up.
“The world is already hard enough. We don’t need to put more burdens on our people. With this system, we’re giving them control and peace of mind.”