As the saying goes, a man’s home is his castle; if this is true, then working for an affordable housing agency is truly a noble undertaking. Employees of organizations that provide low-income housing assistance know the satisfaction of helping those in need, but also the difficulty of managing the varying programs and vast amount of information that accompanies such work!

How can Salesforce be an asset to these organizations? Consider this: without a proper system for storing all of this information, countless valuable hours are wasted on data entry and retrieval. Information may be duplicated or siloed in different systems, making it difficult to combine for reporting.  Salesforce provides the framework necessary to keep all of these details orderly and easily accessible.

Affordable housing organizations such as the Philadelphia Housing Authority offer excellent educational and developmental programs that help low-income residents achieve success and economic self-sufficiency. Such programs include Career Training, Neighborhood Networks, and Family Self-Sufficiency workshops. It is important to have a reliable system that will keep track of scheduling, community engagement, participation in events and programs, and other essential details. With the help of Salesforce, community organizers are able to better gauge the results of their efforts by tracking events and attendance over time.

In addition to event participation and community development activities, housing authorities must store large amounts of client data.  It is crucial for affordable housing organizations to keep track of client contact information, program eligibility criteria, case histories, detailed records of interactions, client progress, and milestone achievement.  All this is critical to efficiently manage programs (such as housing subsidies or vouchers) as well as meet reporting requirements for Housing & Urban Development (HUD) and other government agencies.

The benefits of using Salesforce spread to nearly every facet of these agencies. Salesforce manages all of the data surrounding initiatives such as homeownership counseling and education, lending, grants and funding, debt management, housing development, and community building and organizing. Instead of struggling to retrieve information about client intake or lead and prospect conversion, the details are readily available when they are needed. Stress and disorganization are eradicated to create a work environment of efficiency and professionalism!

For further convenience, Salesforce can integrate with back office systems to easily and efficiently share information. It is also possible to access everything on mobile devices so that affordable housing agency employees have constant access to information for clients—at any time or place!

By using Salesforce, affordable housing agencies can rest easy knowing that the highly-sensitive personal data for each client is kept not only organized, but perfectly secure.  Salesforce is the perfect tool to keep operations running smoothly, and Acutedge helps public housing agencies and other affordable housing organizations to fully utilize all the advantages Salesforce has to offer.

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Paige Triola is a Lafayette College graduate who has a passion for using technology to help nonprofit organizations make as great an impact on society as possible. She is responsible for content marketing at Acutedge. Paige strives to stay abreast of the latest Salesforce features and updates. In her spare time she likes watching and practicing mixed martial arts and painting in watercolor.