Inspiring young people through arts education

The mission of Young Audiences of Oregon & SW Washington is to inspire young people and expand their learning through the arts, and its core work connects a roster of talented teaching artists with schools for artist residencies, workshops and performances. They were founded in 1958 as a local chapter of Young Audiences Arts for Learning (YA), the nation’s largest arts-in-education organization that is leading the building of a new generation of creatively minded individuals.

After moving its program scheduling system to Salesforce, the staff at Young Audiences of Oregon & SW Washington had to maintain information about their artists and programs in two places: Salesforce and its website. Discrepancies between the two systems caused immediate headaches, as it needed to publicly display artist and program data that was sourced in a private Salesforce database.

Enter Soapbox Engage's Directories app, with a powerful and flexible approach to solving this conundrum.

Displaying hundreds of community programs with the Directories app

The Young Audiences roster includes nearly 250 programs that can be designed to fit the specific needs of a school or community. It has a slate of different programs, both in-person and virtual, and typically work with about 200 venues a year. Most of its work serves K-5 public schools, in addition to summer camps, libraries, and other community spaces.

Making sure all those data points were easily consumed by their community was the challenge. Thankfully, using the Soapbox Engage Directories app, Young Audience is able to display its Artist & Program Guide on their website in a user-friendly way. The guide shows data from two custom Salesforce objects: Programs and Program Components. When a program is updated in Salesforce, the program directory is also automatically updated in real time. No duplicate data entry required!

Better yet, schools are able to search and browse the programs, and then submit a schedule request. Searching the Artist & Program Guide is easy, and filters allow principals, classroom teachers, and PTA members to search the guide by artform, grade, or curriculum connections. Visitors can enter keywords, the name of an artist, check virtual/in-person options, and even sort by residency, performance, workshop, or teacher workshop.

Easy customizability with the Soapbox Engage Directories app

The flexibility of Soapbox Engage allows staff to customize and adjust the directory at a moment’s notice. When Young Audiences first implemented the Directories app, it was in the middle of a major website redesign. Leveraging Soapbox Engage's custom template option allowed it to perfectly match the design of the directory with their new website. Later, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, it was able to add virtual class options, and even a distance learning search field to make finding these critical programs easy.

Using the seamless Salesforce integration, Young Audiences has been able to keep its community automatically aware of the impact on its event capacity. For instance, it displays a unique image for a program that has limited availability or has sold out of registrations. These images are triggered to change automatically from Salesforce once event capacity has hit a predetermined target number.

As Young Audiences continues to grow, Soapbox Engage will be there as a flexible service to grow alongside their needs. Steadily growing in scope and programming, the organization continues to evolve, offering a full range of educational arts programming in multiple disciplines and cultures — the only arts organization in the region to do so. We're proud to support their vast and ever-growing roster of arts programs, and look forward to seeing them expand their impact even further.