Laron Olson
“In all that “wandering,” I learned how to gather and report what they needed, through “clicks not code.””
Laron Olson became acquainted with Database Sherpa in 2008 when he noticed the need for a CRM at Take the Next Step (TTNS), a nonprofit organization serving homeless and low income residents in the Skykomish River Valley near Seattle, WA.
Founded by Laron's wife, Donna, in 2005, TTNS kept track of their organization for years through spreadsheets that had become overgrown. When Laron volunteered to help with the finance and marketing aspects in 2008, he realized that Salesforce offered a solution for their nonprofit. From his background running a business, Laron knew the value of Salesforce, but did not initially expect to be creating the instance himself.
Laron’s work with Database Sherpa to create a Salesforce instance for TTNS started with an eye-opening analysis of the nonprofit’s business processes. The process helped the group realize that they were not fulfilling their mission, and helped reshape the programs.
Over the course of 6 months, Laron poured 400-600 hours into learning Salesforce, and guide Ashima encouraged him to explore and kept him from “going off the cliff.” In all that “wandering,” he learned how to gather and report what they needed, through “clicks not code.”
Since building the TTNS Salesforce instance, Laron has been involved in the Database Sherpa practice group, graciously sharing some of the Salesforce procedures and admin tips he has gathered along the way. These days, Laron finds that TTNS's Salesforce instance only occasionally requires his tinkering as a system administrator. All the effort upfront, and the learning process, were worthwhile. “It just works.”
As with most people, Laron’s recent experiences with TTNS have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization had to adapt quickly when face-to-face programs had to be shelved, and donations initially slowed to a trickle in March/April 2020. However, the need in the Snohomish County community was still great.
The TTNS organization quickly pivoted to become a conduit between emergency funding and the people most in need. What they learned in planning their initial journey with Salesforce – slowing down, taking stock, and defining business processes – became the very thing that helped them adapt as donors and grants came pouring back. As the effort grew, Laron invested a couple of days into building a way to track and report payments to recipients. By the end of 2021, TTNS will have tracked $500K in payments to individuals affected by the pandemic through their Salesforce instance.
Laron has noticed that in the social services world, it’s not too difficult to track output – like how many sack lunches are packed and delivered – in the database. And there is reward in that. However, the bigger reward is outcomes, or the ways peoples’ lives are changed for the better. That is the reason you do what you do. Finding a way to track overall successes – like the graduation rates of kids in the after-school program – and implementing it in Salesforce so it can be reported and shared has helped keep the focus on the things that matter for TTNS.