Wildlife Victoria is a wildlife Emergency Response Service connecting sick, injured and orphaned native wildlife in Victoria with the help they need. It has been operating for more than 30 years as an independent, not-for-profit organisation focussed on the welfare of Australia's unique wildlife. Last year, Wildlife Victoria’s Emergency Response Service received more than 100,000 requests for assistance and supported more than 78,000 sick, injured or orphaned native animals.

Wildlife Victoria educates the community about wildlife, and helps the community manage wildlife incidents, advocating for wildlife whenever their welfare is under threat or compromised.

Challenges

Prior to 2009, Wildlife Victoria had a very small team that provided statewide wildlife rescue services, heavily reliant on volunteers. The simple CRM Salesforce installation recorded membership details only.

During and after the tragic 2009 Victorian Bushfires, Wildlife Victoria received an influx of donations from all over the world as well as urgent responses to the Emergency Service for wildlife rescue in a short period of time.

The challenge was to keep costs down so that the donations could go to where they were needed thereby delivering on the organisation’s mission.

"Without our Salesforce CRM, our small team would not have coped with the high number of donations and calls for wildlife in distress."

Solution

Wildlife Victoria implemented the Non Profit Support Pack with Salesforce which supplies 10 free licences and features specific to not for profit organisations.

The Salesforce Customer Portal became a vital link to the Volunteer community, allowing ease of updating details and wildlife rescue cases.

Payments2Us was the secure engine of Wildlife Victoria’s fundraising campaigns and allowed many processes to be automated such as renewal reminders and checking for expired credit cards.

Another key part of the solution specific to wildlife rescue was the integration of Pendula (SMS Provider) that could quickly and automatically send SMS messages to volunteers and members of the public to keep them informed on the wildlife rescue.

"We wanted the functionality to save time to help save wildlife, while also collecting valuable statistics to show the value of what our service provides."

Results

The Emergency Response Service was implemented entirely into Salesforce making it easier to take 60,000 + calls, 30,000 cases, and matching volunteers to an emergency in their local area by google maps within Salesforce.

The SMS system reduced time to respond to emergencies. 300,000 SMSs were sent over the year to volunteers and services in addition to receiving responses directly into Salesforce.

The Volunteer Portal has allowed volunteers to update their own details, keep cases up to date, and respond to emergencies initially out of their suggested locations.

The implementation of Salesforce and Payments2Us allowed the scaling up of fundraising capacity significantly. The 2020 bush fires were a good illustration, as the team was overwhelmed with generosity around Australia but the entire world.

The implementation included automatic receipting, automatic handling of regular giving, automatic de-duplication all within Salesforce by Payments2Us, while also integrating with other platforms such as PayPal, reducing most administration work for credit card payments, and making it easier to process manual donations.

The membership module has been completely automated with renewal reminders, allowing the organisation to focus on other areas.