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The ancient proverb from Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu tells us: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But in the case of Lauren's Kids, the journey was 6,000 miles – and it began with a walk.
Seven years ago, Lauren Book, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, began Lauren’s Kids, an organization dedicated to the idea that 95 percent of childhood sexual abuse is preventable through education and awareness. To raise awareness for her cause, she launched Walk in My Shoes, a 1,500-mile walk across the state of Florida, in 2010.
From that first Walk in My Shoes event, Lauren’s Kids has grown from a handful of supporters donating money and time to a powerhouse foundation that raises awareness internationally, teaches kids about abuse, and puts their weight behind legislation that helps victims and prevent abuse.
Starting a Movement
There are thousands of organizations and awareness campaigns like Book’s around the country, and most of them began just like Walk in My Shoes did.
A person, or a small group of people, wants to raise awareness and funds to help a cause, so they organize a walk, a run, even a rummage sale. Plenty of these events become annual affairs that are well-attended by members of the community, but every once in a while an event like this becomes something more like a movement. Consider Race for the Cure, or even this summer’s Ice Bucket Challenge to raise awareness for ALS.
The alchemy that sparks the growth of an event like Lauren’s Kids' Walk in My Shoes is difficult to define, but success almost always requires a good cause, smart volunteers and mentors who provide a supportive environment for the transition from fundraiser to something more like a business, and a strong, driven, passionate leader like Book to inspire and drive the cause forward.
From Zero to 6,000 Miles with Salesforce.com
In a video that documents this year’s race, Book says it herself, “When you start something like this, you don’t know if anyone will follow.” But she started it anyway, with a simple goal: “All I wanted to do was make people feel better.” So far, she’s walked 6,000 miles, picking up support and inspiring change along the route.
At first, Book worked at loose ends, learning as she went how to acquire permits, raise money, and talk with the press. But as she completed each walk, she found she’d acquired more help, raised more money, and generated more interest in what she was doing.
As her walk grew into a movement, she had much more opportunity to do the work she wanted most to do: educate kids and develop better laws to protect them. All this growth brought the need for more sophisticated tools and technology to manage the project.
“I went from answering every email through my AOL account and taking every call from my cell phone to a place where, as the organization grew, those solutions just weren’t working anymore,” says Book.
Last year, Book's friend and FullOpp's Erick Mahle attended Dreamforce and learned about solutions that salesforce.com offered for nonprofits. In Salesforce, Mahle saw a good fit for Lauren’s Kids.
As Erick and Lauren started to partner with the Salesforce team, Lauren realized just how much data she’d collected over the past few years.
Over the course of the years, thousands of walkers had signed up to walk, Lauren made contact with hundreds of community organizations and law enforcement departments to organize the walks, there had been donors who didn’t walk at all but contributed through PayPal, and she’d reached out to hundreds of schools — all of these disparate pieces of data were valuable to the organization but weren’t organized.
Enter Salesforce, where all the data could be organized, accessed and shared in one single database.
As Book worked with the team to categorize the data and set up an account, the picture of how Lauren’s Kids could employ the data became clearer. Now, with all their data in one place, the organization could:
In the past, the team relied on onsite, paper-based registration, which ultimately led to stacks of paper with illegible email and mailing addresses that got a hundreds of bounce-backs when the Walk in My Shoes team attempted to email them.
Salesforce helped digitize this process. No longer did they have stacks of paper and data that needed to be manually entered, but the registration information itself was much more accurate.
In 2014, Walk in My Shoes really started ramping up with Salesforce and registered 1000 walkers, but ended up loading others who did not pre-register at the walk sites themselves and ended up with about 10K walkers. This would not have been possible just a year ago.
Taking Bigger Steps
Salesforce1 is also helping the team track their progress with education, a core mission for Book. Lauren’s Kids' “Safer, Smarter Kids” curriculum is being taught in schools throughout Florida and beyond, and as the program grows, the organization uses Salesforce1 to track progress, answer questions, and collect feedback to improve their efforts.
With hard data, Lauren’s Kids finds it easier to make a case when seeking grants and funding to grow the program, which is currently being taught in the U.S., Canada, Barbados, the Netherlands and South Africa. Partnerships with Crime Stoppers International and UNICEF are taking the message abroad.
Did you know that Salesforce offers free technology for Lauren's Kids and other nonprofit organizations? Through the Power of Us program, the Foundation offers the first 10 Enterprise Edition licenses at no cost. Take a test drive.
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