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SPEAKER: It was really life or death situations. You're talking about people who could be homeless if you don't have a system in place to navigate their situation.
SPEAKER: I remember it very vividly. It was March 15th. We were asked to go home because COVID hit. We really had no clue as to what to expect. Within just a few days of that, it really became apparent that a lot of people were going to be out of work without income and therefore their housing was going to be at risk. So we reached out and were partnered with Dream Key Partners to stand up a locally funded COVID rent relief program.
SPEAKER: Everything was quick. You know, we were up and running with a rudimentary system in about three weeks. It was a glorified Excel sheet that we used. We just did not have the tools to do what we ultimately needed to do.
SPEAKER: We were in desperate need of a new system. Right at the end of 2020, when we were kind of ending one pot of funding and we were starting another, we kind of looked at each other and were like, we have to have something that is going to allow us to track data better, understand the data, and be able to run reports that our partners require. So Dream Key Partners reached out to Publicis Sapient to build a tailored Salesforce platform that would allow us to collect all the information that we needed in one place, you know, with the required documentation as well as to show funders what had been spent and for how many people.
SPEAKER: It's not enough to just say you need to transform and here's some amazing digital tools. You really need to understand what they're trying to achieve and that only comes by listening. I'm Jeremy Johnson. I'm in business development for Publicis Sapient and I work with state and local clients up and down the East Coast. When we were developing our Salesforce system, PS just really made it simple to contact them to explain what it was that was needed. Our clients, we treat them like partners, right? So what are you trying to achieve? What's the impact you're already making or trying to make here? And how can we come alongside that with the best solutions? We had a very quick design session with them to say, okay, how do we scale this thing down appropriately and make changes that are unique to the needs within that community?
SPEAKER: There was a lot of intake in the beginning because of course they want to know what we need. We started meeting with Jeremy, morning, noon, and sometimes late nights. And we had a fantastic team, but we had to build trust really quickly with them. We were just iterating through kind of a set of live demos to come up with a set of changes, a set of requirements on what we're going to change.
SPEAKER: Our focus was to get millions of dollars out the door. It was not to be a technical team and create a whole website. We just did not have that capacity. Working with PS allowed us to be able to focus on what we were good at doing and it then allowed them to focus on the technical stuff to get us where we needed to be.
SPEAKER: The volume of applications we get is in the thousands. And it's people in all different stages of hardship, from people who are behind on their utility bills, but okay with their rent, to people who are in eviction court, but are okay with their utilities, to people who need everything. My name is Kate Haisley. My job is to process applications from people seeking help with rent and utilities based on their COVID hardships. There's basically five qualifiers, illness, job loss, reduction of income. If you're self-employed and your business has been affected. And then the last is childcare.
SPEAKER: The application itself was a digital application, but it's seven pages long. DreamKey had to translate those guidelines into what they needed to see on the screen.
SPEAKER: When someone applies online, the information gets put into a Salesforce application. That application is then assigned to someone in my position and we're able to go into it.
SPEAKER: Salesforce provides these cloud tools where we don't have to wait around for servers to be spawned up somewhere. Like that day, we were able to get started. That cuts down days, sometimes weeks.
SPEAKER: Then there's a second page, which is more address, utility bills, rent, where all of those figures get put in. Then there's a third section, which is an awards section, which is where you actually put in how much money you're going to be able to award to that person for their electricity, their gas, their water.
SPEAKER: That data is available immediately to everyone that's interacting with that applicant. So they could see maybe where the applicant's stuck and needs a little help to fill out a section or the application's done and now they need to review it, to process it. All that can be done seamlessly from wherever we were.
SPEAKER: Having a database that allowed us to compile all of the documents that a customer may have sent over and then all you have to do is just click on the button and it pops up. You can actually formulate it to make a file so that it's nice and pretty for an auditor was a game changer for us.
SPEAKER: We hit the deadline. I think it was in a few weeks we had the application up and running for people to use.
SPEAKER: If you think about trying to do what we do with the U.S. Postal Service, it wouldn't happen. I mean, there's no way you could get someone from a position where, say they're a week out from a court date or worse, a week out from lockout. If we didn't have Salesforce and the ability to react quickly, we wouldn't be able to help people.
SPEAKER: It is a crazy good success. The light is at the end of the tunnel because we have the systems in place that just make our job easier from day to day. Working with PS just helped streamline our flows and our processes to offer our customer a better experience.
SPEAKER: It isn't buying software. It isn't, you know, saying yes, which is all my job was just to say yes, I'll go ahead and try this. The truth is it was the people. It was the staff members who were behind it who said we're going to implement this system, we're going to get it up and running, and then they did. And that was just the most amazing part of that.
SPEAKER: It was like turning on a fire hose and we were sitting there when we turned the lights on on the solution, seeing these applications just roll in. It got real really quickly. The enormity of what was about to happen set in.
SPEAKER: Even though we see that every day, you know, and we're able to help people every day, when you see it on screen and you see what it means to them, you know, it's just super emotional.
SPEAKER: Just watching the film, I mean, it's about DreamKey not wanting anyone to fall through the cracks. It's the story there on the screen of these women that made it happen. I'm just listening, offering up a solution really that keeps track of everything, but they were doing the real work.
SPEAKER: We made about $75 million in rent relief payments through this program in our last fiscal year, and those are not usually too large. So it's over 11,000 households that I know that we assisted in our last fiscal year through this process. In 2021, we were able to help 320 households experiencing homelessness in the house.
SPEAKER: How does it make me feel? I mean, that's the why I do what I do, is to keep people from experiencing that kind of crisis that then impacts them potentially for the rest of their lives. So it feels really good to kind of be able to head that off.
SPEAKER: There are a lot of emails that we've gotten that say, oh my gosh, thank you so much. I, you know, did not know how we were going to make it. It's great. I mean, you know, it's concrete evidence that what we do makes a difference.
SPEAKER: Thousands, 20,000, and just all of them in the exact same position. All of them just looking for something, you know. You know, so often you just don't think there is hope, and in this case, you know, we were able to help, and I'm just so grateful.
SPEAKER: It's still really humbling. We focus on impact, right, instead of the technology, right? Of course, we're bringing that technology. We know these tools really well, but it's really the impact that we align on.
SPEAKER: What may seem like not a big deal to me or to you or to anybody is a big deal to that person who's applying for assistance.
SPEAKER: What I hope for is that we realize that housing should be a human right, that no one should be worried about the fact that, you know, they need a roof over their head. They should have that. That shouldn't be any parent's worry, is where does their kid sleep at night?
SPEAKER: It makes me feel good. I don't think that I do it for me to feel good, though. I think part of it is like, yeah, I want to serve. Like, that's just what I know I'm supposed to do, and I'm just doing that. These experiences are just a cherry on top.