Helping kids across the nation live healthier lives
Action for Healthy Kids uses Soapbox Engage to magnify and measure impact
Action for Healthy Kids fights childhood obesity, undernourishment and physical inactivity by helping schools become healthier places so kids can live healthier lives. They work with chapters across the country to mobilize thousands of teachers, students, moms, dads, school wellness experts and other concerned citizens to raise healthier kids.
As a nonprofit with a nationwide mission and a staff of fifteen, Action for Healthy Kids relies on Soapbox Engage to connect with supporters across the country on any device, measure the impact of their efforts in a way no other tool can make possible, and radically reduce administrative time and headaches.
“I do believe that Soapbox stands by its mission. They speak the nonprofit language well and want to forward the mission of nonprofits. From my experience, that’s rare - and it’s true across the company. We, as an organization, really appreciate that.”
Anthony Moss, Senior Technology Operations Manager, Action for Healthy Kids
Not just a redesign, an “inspiration”
Action for Healthy Kids’ adoption of Soapbox Engage facilitated a fundamental shift in their online marketing presence and connects with their audience in entirely new, more mission-focused ways.
“Most of our constituency has historically been health care or school professionals. They have been our strength for many years,” said Anthony Moss, Senior Technology Operations Manager for Action for Healthy Kids. “That is great but we wanted to reach out to parents and others who believe in our mission. That’s really why we retooled our website: to make it more inspiring to potential lay volunteers.”
Within weeks of launch, the new mobile-friendly Soapbox site vaulted traffic by 180% from tablet users and 254% from mobile phones. Visitors on all devices are staying longer, too, with increases in time spent on the site of 208% for desktops, 150% for tablets, and 212% for mobile phones.
Empowering staff, saving “hours and hours of time”
The adoption of Soapbox Engage has been transformative internally as well through site administrator tools that empower the entire staff to effectively manage their message online:
“Soapbox has really simplified site management,” said Moss. “We needed all fifteen of our staff people to make changes when they had to, and Soapbox delivers that.”
It has also streamlined online supporter engagement through event management tools that save time and safeguard data:
“In the past, we had the state chapters using their own event tools, like EventBrite. Sometimes those names would get into our system and sometimes they wouldn’t,” stated Moss. “For one of our bigger events, we would have hundreds of registrations. When you think about all of those Excel files that would need to be individually configured and sent to the data administrator for clean up and import...it has required hours and hours of time.”
With Engage’s online event management tool, Action for Healthy Kids manages chapter-specific events on their website, and benefits from the Salesforce.com Nonprofit Success Pack integration that Engage offers.
“Now all of those names go directly into Salesforce.com through Soapbox without any data administrator time,” said Moss.
“Painful, painful” business process made easy and efficient for staff and applicants
Soapbox Engage and its integration with Salesforce.com is also transforming core business processes for staff and supporters alike:
“The process for applying for our grants has completely changed as a result of Engage,” said Moss. “It was a painful, painful thing before. We’d have to send people to Survey Monkey and dowload responses in an Excel file.”
“Integrating our grant application process with our website and Salesforce through Soapbox Engage has been the biggest benefit for us.”
“The only tool I could find” to accomplish what we needed “very badly”
Action for Healthy Kids faced a common dilemma at the core of every nonprofit: how to gauge impact. Specifically, as a nonprofit mobilizing thousands of volunteers to catalyze change in schools across the nation, how could they know how many schools they were touching?
In Soapbox Engage and Salesforce.com, Action for Healthy Kids found their answer: The combination of Salesforce.com’s flexible and scalable system and Soapbox’s ability to query and update data in Salesforce.com provided Action for Healthy Kids the information they needed while saving countless hours of staff time.
“We needed very badly to know how many schools we were touching for internal reporting purposes,” said Moss. “In doing research on various applications, Soapbox Engage was the only tool I could find to accomplish this.”
More than a platform, a true partnership
Beyond the clicks and code of a powerful and beautiful website that supercharges their mission, Action for Healthy Kids found a true partner:
“I do believe that Soapbox stands by its mission,” said Moss. “They speak the nonprofit language well and want to forward the mission of nonprofits. From my experience, that’s rare - and it’s true across the company. We, as an organization, really appreciate that.”
