Salvation Army Echelon, the official young adult auxiliary of The Salvation Army, is the product of an idea that began in Dallas, Texas in 2010. Echelon is the next generation of community action for the Salvation Army. Men and women age 21 to 35 engage in networking, fundraising and community service in chapters across the U.S.
After the network of chapters expanded from one club in Dallas to several clubs across the nation, Salvation Army Echelon wanted a solution to house the chapters under one umbrella while allowing each club to customize their own site. They chose Skvare based on their expertise in CiviCRM and the added benefit of having all web-related services - web development, hosting and maintenance - provided by one company.
Angie Harmon, Chair of PR & Communications of the Echelon Peoria Advisory Board says,
“It’s enabled us to gather attendees and volunteers for our meetings and service events. The biggest benefit so far is probably the ability to allow people to register through the website for our paid events. Before this, we were using individual event pages and each chapter was using a different third-party provider.”
Features
One of the primary goals for Echelon was to give each chapter the ability to share unique content in a sophisticated and accessible way while keeping the Salvation Army branding consistent throughout. It was important to make website changes simple for chapter members who have minimal technical experience. In addition, each chapter website needed to perform a variety of tasks, including:
- track memberships,
- send out e-newsletters to members or donors,
- set up events and discount codes,
- recruit, schedule and track volunteers, and
- show a calendar of events, meetings and volunteer opportunities.
Permissions Set for Success
One of the main challenges was to give each chapter full control over their local membership information. Skvare’s developers created groups and modified the ACL’s (Access Control Lists) to segment the access, editing, and deletion of chapter-specific contacts. Reporting benefits from this setup, too: though the queries are shared, the reports are configured to only display results for the local chapter. This protects member data from other locations but provides a predictable, repeatable process across chapters, saving time and overhead costs. Skvare also delivered a custom solution for Salvation Army Echelon members to apply their member discount at the time of event registration.
The new website automates many administrative tasks, combining the power of a central system with localized options for each chapter. Ongoing training, website maintenance and hosting from Skvare leave Salvation Army Echelon members free to do important community work.
To learn more about this project or other CiviCRM solutions, please visit Skvare.
