Tools for Success Spotlight on Forms

School for Social Entrepreneurs Meets 123 Form Builder

It comes without saying that, in 13 years of activity, 123 Form Builder has seen more than their share of successful customer stories. One of the more recent ones in the Education niche involves School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE), a Nonprofit organization that organizes more than 25 programs supporting Social Entrepreneurship, as well as hundreds of short courses.

Before they settled on 123 Form Builder, SSE used to have issues with their application collection process. Having to handle thousands of applications (many of which came with file attachments) was extremely time consuming and stressful for them. Even more, it left room for human error, which led to loss of qualitative and quantitative data.

123 Form Builder helped them create long complex online forms that enabled the School for Social Entrepreneurs to save time, effort, and eliminate the risk of losing information in the applicant selection process. These online forms simplified the entire data collection and management process, allowing SSE to easily query and access the data and the PDF files submitted by applicants.

To make sure the customer is happy with the final result, 123 Form Builder provided extensive technical support in setting up the forms and ensuring that they work properly at every level: from how easy it is to set up a new form to how easy it is to simply extract all the necessary applicant information from Salesforce

“If you want to simplify a complex process, go for 123 Form Builder” — Penny Rodie, Salesforce Functional Analyst at School for Social Entrepreneurs.

School for Social Entrepreneurs is not even by far the only customer of this kind 123 Form Builder has handled. From WWF to Salvation Army and University of Oxford, the team of form building pros at 123 has worked with a wide array of clients — all of whom were satisfied with the end results of their collaboration.

Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank Case Study

When Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank set out to respond to a surge of need from the community during the COVID-19 pandemic, staff used FormAssembly to help build processes around new service expectations. While the web form platform had already been extremely useful in supporting the organization’s ongoing volunteer efforts and partnerships, FormAssembly also helped the Food Bank rise to the challenge of meeting diverse needs in the community during the pandemic.

Justin Gilmore, Decision Support Analyst, and the rest of the team at the Food Bank work year-round to support volunteers, food distribution efforts, community resources, and strategic partnerships. The organization uses Salesforce to manage these functions and relationships from a high level, while FormAssembly tracks important data about community members and volunteers.

With FormAssembly, staff at the Food Bank can avoid some of the more traditional pain points associated with data collection. Many times, there is frustration in having to continually train new users on using complex data in a way that makes sense. Pain points also revolve around data processing and extra coding, which FormAssembly mitigates. By using integrated web forms, staff members at the Food Bank are able to conquer these challenges without expending extra time, money or resources.

“We’ve had FormAssembly for as long as we’ve had Salesforce,” Gilmore said. “It’s very hard to imagine life without it.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Justin and the team needed to accelerate the kind of work that was already in place to reach more people in the community. New tactics included services like home delivery and other targeted assistance.

In response to the health crisis, the Food Bank had to shift its processes to accommodate stay-at-home orders and to provide service to high-risk individuals. Through FormAssembly’s COVID-19 Assistance Program, they were able to implement an online reservation system for food delivery. The Food Bank used a hotline to take incoming calls and provide food assistance recommendations along with other services.

The COVID-19 crisis initiated a shift in distribution models, and the Food Bank began to take on a higher volume of calls from those who were homebound and/or at-risk. Going the extra mile during this time meant assigning three additional staff members to monitor the phone lines, receive requests and process home delivery needs through a FormAssembly form. Features like repeating sections and Salesforce object aliases, which offer dynamic form field recommendations for form users, allow for easy consolidation and visibility.

“FormAssembly helps us make the program guidance we provide to those that we serve more interactive and needs-based,” Gilmore said.

In the future, the Food Bank hopes to build upon what the team has been able to achieve with FormAssembly during the pandemic. This involves including new Food Bank programs & services that more staff members can use.

The Power of Workplace Productivity - How Simon Fraser University Implemented Formstack

Running a college, university, or nonprofit organization is no small feat. Whether your organization is on a mission to make the world a better place or prepare young students for the workplace, you’re likely operating on a shoestring budget. Making good use of precious resources like time and money helps your organization stretch a dollar further.

Adopting digital workflows is a great way to save time for your organization, but you want to ensure you’re investing wisely when building your techstack. As a single-source platform for data capture, document generation, and eSignature collection, Formstack is here to help you level up your digital workflows.

Let’s take a look at a Formstack use case and how one organization seamlessly implemented it. Managing the student recruitment and enrollment lifecycle for prospective students requires multiple forms, processes, and communications with potential students, parents and academic counsellors. When Simon Fraser University (SFU) was looking for a digital solution that would meet their complex data workflows, Formstack for Salesforce enabled them to streamline the student experience while capturing the data they needed right within Salesforce.

SFU didn’t have a method for collecting lead information from prospective students directly in Salesforce, outside of a few laborious spreadsheet imports, which were very time consuming. They also didn’t have an easy way to collect required information or documents to help answer cases. Any software they use must meet FOIPPA compliance. Due to the ever-changing needs of their recruitment office, the ability to have functional users outside of their IT department create and adjust forms was a business need.

With Formstack for Salesforce, SFU was able to create a digitized prospective student collection method, as well as organize the case questions forms with required information (and collect attachments), and more. Since Formstack is FOIPPA compliant, it met SFU’s compliance standards. With Formstack’s prefill capabilities, any future surveys or forms sent out to the students are prefilled with the student’s information, which allowed them to not have to ask the same question multiple times, and enabled SFU to build better relationships and engagement with students.

1. Online Forms + Portals: Scholarship Application
   A current student wants to review the university’s scholarship offering and submit applications. Using a Formstack Portal, the student can easily access all the scholarship applications in one place.
2. File Uploads + Workflows: Financial Aid Approval
   The student uploads their resume, transcript, and a letter of recommendation using the online scholarship application form. Once submitted, the student is sent a confirmation email, and a Form stack workflow routes the information to the financial aid office to confirm or deny the submission.
3. eSignature: Scholarship Review Board
   The scholarship review board receives the student’s application. Once approved, the application is sent to the university’s Director of Financial Aid for a final sigh-off. To approve the scholarship request, the document is sent for an electronic signature from both the Director of Financial Aid and the student.
4. Document Generation: Scholarship Documentation
   The student is sent an email congratulating them for winning the scholarship. It includes a beautifully designed award, which is automatically generated using form data and the financial aid director’s electronic signature.

Paperless automation tools are the answer to your workplace woes. Smart forms and digital documentation will make things easier on your university donors, prompting faster and more frequent contributions. You can also use automation to personalize student relations, gain deeper insights, and even help ensure compliance. The sooner you make these moves toward becoming a paperless university, the better the results will be for all involved. See how Formstack’s higher education and nonprofit solutions can help you get ahead.