Here are four outstanding opportunities to enhance your team's professional development over the coming months:
Raisely's Annual Fundraising Benchmarks Webinar: Join next Tuesday, 19 March, at 11 am (Online) to gain invaluable insights into successful fundraising strategies.
Digiraise Conference: Mark your calendars for 1 and 2 May at Aerial UTS, Sydney, for a deep dive into digital fundraising and innovation.
Technology for Social Justice Conference: Discover cutting-edge technologies for social impact on 1 and 2 May at the Telstra Customer Insights Centre, Melbourne.
F&P Big4 Fundraising: Don't miss this premier fundraising event for the latest trends and best practices. 29, 30, and 31 October at Pullman on the Park, Melbourne.
It's a pleasure to share the amazing strides Blaze Your Trail has made over the past year.
We've been able to make a direct impact on five United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) - a feat we're incredibly proud of.
We offered free training sessions to 201 job seekers who, in return, volunteered a whopping 24,590 hours for a variety of charities. Despite the job cuts in big tech, 46 of these job seekers found employment.
We didn't stop there. We also offered discounted and pro-bono consulting services, primarily in education and conservation, to 32 charities. We also hosted thrice-weekly Ask Us Anything sessions, benefiting 70 employees across 36 organisations.
Our team has grown to 11 dedicated members, 8 of whom joined by starting as job seekers in our work experience program. Our customers are happy too, giving us a near-perfect 4.9-star CSAT rating.
In all, we supported 47 charities, trained 70 employees and 201 volunteers, and helped 46 job seekers get tech jobs. We also provided over a million dollars in pro-bono services.
Three years ago, I started Blaze Your Trail with an ambitious dream. Today, I'm proud of our team and the impact we're making. It's a joy to run a business that empowers charities and makes a real difference. Thank you for helping us to do good, together.
Jessica Macpherson OAM, Founder of Blaze Your Trail
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This is Grace - a grey Arabian born in 2000.
She is one of the horses cared for a small charity in QLD called Hope Reins - a pro bono customer of Blaze Your Trail.
This is Grace's story as told by Hope Reins.
Grace has saved a life. It happened in July 2013…
Grace and Beauty (Promise’s mum) were having a long holiday at a friend’s place, the other side of Gympie, enjoying their grass.
Beside the property is a house where a man and his brother live.
The brother had recently changed medication.
The change and new medication were causing him to be disoriented.
At 10pm one night he wandered out of the house, crawled under the barbed wire fence between the two properties and stumbled across the paddock into the dam that is there.
He can’t swim.
His absence was almost immediately noted, but where would they look for him?
Should they jump in the cars and go down to the main road nearby?
Was he wandering in the dark around the house?
The brother at this point noticed Grace. “She was going ballistic,” he later said.
“She was tossing her head around and rearing up a little on the side of the dam. And she appeared to be glowing white.
We raced through the fence and found my brother in the water.
Another few minutes and we would have been too late.
The next day, our friends found the man’s jacket shredded in the barbed wire fence.
Their neighbour came to apologise for all the noise and lights from the night before (none of which they heard!). “The horse saved my brother’s life,” their neighbour said, “I don’t know how to thank her.”
Our friends replied, “She really likes carrots!”
Grace was born with the end of her nose badly twisted (called a wry nose). Her tongue hangs out sometimes and her teeth don’t line up, but that doesn’t stop her eating! It’s interesting that the majority of people upon meeting Grace, have one of two responses … either they instantly find her beautiful and sweet or they think she is angry and might attack them.
In reality, Grace has such a sweet, gentle spirit that her personality breaks through and people see the amazing little horse that she is. Her story is one of coping with a disability. We focus on her ability.
She runs with all the grace and beauty Arabians are famous for, however, due to her twisted nose, one of Grace’s nostrils is partially closed and she is not able to breathe in as much air as most horses. This means she can’t run for as long but she doesn’t seem to mind!
Grace loves life, and really loves people. She enjoys as much attention from humans as she can possibly get!
Grace’s party trick is to eat a mango whole and spit out the seed while the juice runs down her body.
If this story has touched you please head to the Hope Reins website, join their newsletter list and make a donation.
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After careful review of our program, we have decided to refine our focus and limit the program to residents of Australia and New Zealand. This decision is to ensure that we can provide a more concentrated and valuable experience for job seekers.
We have greatly appreciated the global interest in our program, and we are proud of the 48 volunteers living overseas who have successfully won their first job since Blaze Your Trail began. You can read some of their stories here.
By narrowing our focus to these Australia and New Zealand, we can better serve our volunteers by facilitating more regular and accessible participation, particularly in our daily classes.
We remain committed to providing a positive and enriching experience for all volunteers, and we believe that this adjustment will contribute to achieving that goal.
]]>Eat Up Australia feeds hungry children so they can grow, learn and succeed. They provide sandwiches to schools to be distributed by teachers and support staff to children who come without lunch.
Read what CEO, Elise Cook had to say about the work that Paula Nunez and Arvindan Ramesh did on their digital transformation from spreadsheets to Salesforce:
"This project meant a huge improvement in operational efficiencies and it has opened up a whole host of relationship management, development and fundraising opportunities that we were not previously able to access. It has also meant a much more streamlined workflow between teams."
You can view and print the Eat Up Australia Case Study here.
]]>4 out of 6 were the first in their family to go to University.
All 6 were women. 5 were migrants. 1 is a refugee.
2 live in Victoria, 2 in the USA, 1 in Canada and 1 in the UK. They all aspire to be Salesforce professionals.
When asked what do you see yourself doing in 5 years time one woman said "the sky is the limit". She has 15 years experience working in Healthcare.
It makes me so happy to be able to welcome such diversity into the IT world, and to support people to get the work experience they need to get their first break.
When you choose Blaze Your Trail to be your fundraising and technology partner you support 100s of job seekers and ensure that the program remains free for them. Thank you!
#socialenterprise #forpurpose #useyourpowersforgood #heckyes
]]>This change was to improve performance and to better position your org for growth.
We have observed that this change has affected some Organisations, particularly those who use Zapier.
We recommend that you check all your integrations and forms - including your donation forms - just be sure that everything is connecting as expected.
For more information about release and maintenance schedules for your new instance, review the Salesforce Release and Maintenance Schedule article.
It is important to note your Instance (in Setup --> Company information) so that you can easily search by this on the Salesforce Trust site.
Note: org is short for organization (with a z) - a deployment of Salesforce with a defined set of licensed users. An organization is the virtual space provided to an individual customer of Salesforce.
Organisations (with a s) means charities, non profits and businesses that use Salesforce.
]]>
Did you know that Blaze Your Trail offers managed services - on demand Salesforce support when you don't have your own?
We are launching our new customer portal and I am very happy with how it looks.
Thanks again Meg Melvin from Sketchability for the original artwork that highlights our love of Agile Methodology, and our unique place in the world.
]]>Blaze Your Trail won the Business Category at the 2023 TechDiversity Awards on the 25th May in Melbourne.
This award recognises businesses that have implemented exceptional diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within their organisation. These companies have demonstrated a commitment to fostering an inclusive work environment and promoting diversity at all levels.
The TechDiversity Awards not only recognise outstanding achievements but also inspire a collective commitment to creating diverse, inclusive, and innovative tech workplace environments. The winners and merit winners serve as role models for organisations across industries, demonstrating the profound impact that diversity and inclusion can have on driving positive change.
One arm of Blaze Your Trail is its service helping for-purpose organisations with consulting and strategic advice that powers their fundraising and use of technology. A significant proportion of this service is provided pro bono.
The other arm is providing work experience for jobseekers facing barriers to employment via volunteering opportunities for the for-purpose organisations (which accounts for Blaze Your Trail s pro bono service offering to its customers). The team at Blaze Your Trail closely supervise the work delivered by the volunteers, and ensure that everything is completed to the highest standard.
The problem is two-fold:
Firstly, there are thousands of individuals in Australia who find it difficult to access both paid employment AND the work experience that will help them gain that employment.
Secondly, there are many small to medium for-purpose organisations who are overwhelmed by technology and this is holding them back from achieving their mission. They either do not possess the technological expertise to find the right IT solutions for their organisations, are overwhelmed by the sheer number of products on the market, are too run off their feet and under-resourced to find the ‘head space’ to source technology solutions, or struggle with a combination of all the above.
By bringing for-purpose organisations and jobseekers together, Blaze Your Trail enables both of these ‘problems’ to problem-solve each other.
Blaze Your Trail ’s initiatives strive to meet UN Goals: 5 (gender equality), 8 (decent work and economic growth) and 16 (promote peaceful and inclusive societies).
]]>Blaze Your Trail has been short listed for the 2023 TechDiversity Awards. People from across industry sectors will gather to celebrate the tangible and measurable ways in which individuals and organisations have made an impact towards more diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces.
At Blaze Your Trail we are committed to making a positive impact on the world by helping small and mighty charities achieve their missions and address some of the most pressing issues facing our society today.
But that's not all. We are also a social enterprise that provides work experience for migrant & re-skilled job seekers, which means that we are not only creating value for our clients but also for our community. By doing so, we are addressing several United Nations Sustainability Development Goals, including decent work and economic growth, reducing inequalities, and partnerships for the goals.
You can join us on the night - more information here....
]]>Here is what one of our job seekers wrote about his experience: "By volunteering with Blaze Your Trail, it provided me with some hands-on experience with Salesforce so I have stories to talk about in my interviews. Even with just a short time with Blaze Your Trail, I learned so much practical knowledge about Salesforce and teamwork. It gave me the confidence I need to do well in my interviews. One of the things we did as a group was to implement matching/duplication rule for an org, guess what, that was my very first task at my new role! Thank you for everything!"
Cooper Investors & MaiTri Foundation, like us, believe the best investment any of us can make is in the lives of others. Read more here
]]>Many people are surprised to learn just how big a role women have played in the development of the modern, digital world. They shouldn’t be. Women have been there right from the very beginning, when a young Ada Lovelace provided the mathematical brain power to help make Charles Babbage’s mechanical computational engine work in the early 1840s.
More recently, Hollywood finally shone a light on the pioneering black women who played a critical role in the US space program taking flight. Their contributions had gone unacknowledged for decades, almost entirely because they were women.
Not having women as a visible part of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has created a false impression that women are not interested in technical fields, or even worse, that somehow they’re not suited to them. In our increasingly digital society, that idea has profound consequences.
Despite being among its earliest pioneers, women in tech have had to fight for their place.
At World Tour Sydney this month, Preena Johansen, Trailblazer and Tableau CRM Analytics Ambassador, described the challenges she faced personally embarking on a tech career.
“When I started in tech, it was a very male-dominated industry, especially when you start looking at coding, developing and data. You have to fight your way through, and in a way, prove that you’re worthy to be up there with everyone else,” she said.
Worldwide, there is a growing acknowledgement of the need to fight this bias. For International Women’s Day 2023, UN Women has chosen the theme “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”, acknowledging the contributions made by women in technology and the challenges they still face.
In Australia, the theme is ‘Cracking the Code: Innovation for a gender equal future’.
While the stories of women in tech are finally starting to be told, the challenges women face in the field of STEM remain significant. According to UNESCO, globally, only 28% of engineering graduates, 22% of artificial intelligence workers and less than one third of tech sector employees are women.
Here in Australia, the number of women enrolling in STEM courses is growing, but there is still a major gap. Women only make up 36% of enrolments in university STEM courses. On average, women still earn 18% less than men across all STEM industries in Australia.
Women’s low representation in these fields means many are missing out on high-paying STEM jobs. Just as important in the long run, women are not given the credit for their influence on technology developments.
Why does this matter? Because the technology and products we develop may not represent the richness and diversity of the real world. As Jessica Macpherson OAM, founder of inclusion-focused Salesforce partner Blaze Your Trail explains, “you end up talking to one of your customers, but you miss out on all the other customers”.
She urges businesses to be “thoughtful about your end user, who’s going to be from a community that doesn’t [necessarily] look like yours.
“Any marketer knows that you can’t have one persona,” she said.
Diversity in STEM is also essential to recognise flaws in coding as a result of implicit bias. According to UN Women, analysis of 133 AI systems across industries found that 44% demonstrated gender bias. In one high-profile example, AI was discovered to be actively discriminating against women in recruitment.
As Johansen points out, this is a complex problem to solve, as AI consumes data without considering its inherent biases, and biases can then become self-reinforcing. She offers internet search as an example: “Bias can begin from the very first search term someone uses to look up a topic on Google, that creates a data point,” explaining that any search from that point on could be influenced by that initial data.
But the effects of the gender gap in technology and innovation go well beyond any one company or product, with consequences for the global economy. The UN’s Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 report found that USD $1 trillion was lost from the GDP of low- and middle-income countries due to a lack of inclusion of women in technology.
The UN has proposed a more gender-responsive approach to innovation, technology, and digital education. Specifically, this means advancing the availability and encouragement of technology and education for young women interested in pursuing STEM-related careers.
This change targets the source of some societal biases creating these issues. But in the more immediate term, giving women in technology access to further development, support and networking seems to help alleviate some barriers. This is often done through meaningful communities of women working together to share skills and experiences.
Trailblazer Communities like Women in Tech Sydney and Women in Tech Melbourne are providing the networks and community to help women pave the way for more women to follow in their footsteps. Tableau CRM Analytics Ambassador Johansen says the Salesforce Trailblazer community has helped her find her own voice as a woman in tech.
“For me, it’s helped me really get the courage to just speak up to talk about my experiences,” she said. “It’s given me opportunities, like speaking at Dreamforce, and sharing my journey and story to help others potentially jump into the tech space.”
And Johansen says the learning is not just one way. “It’s been knowledge sharing—not only me sharing my knowledge, but I’ve learned skills from a lot of other people, a lot of my co-leaders, I’ve been able to learn skills from as well.”
Blaze Your Trail’s Macpherson said increased access to training, delivered the right way, represents a huge opportunity for closing the gender gap in technology. For example, Salesforce’s Trailhead program, she says, “has actually done a lot to level the playing field”, offering free, fun education that people can take on at their own pace—a crucial factor for those juggling family responsibilities.
“Ten years ago if you wanted training, it was expensive. It often involved in-person training and was time consuming. There were significant barriers to entry for a lot of people. So I think that there has been real improvement.”
Visibility also helps. At World Tour 2023, Trailblazer and 2023 Golden Hoodie Winner Anne Fitisemanu described how her organisation TupuToa, is helping to provide professional pathways for underrepresented groups, like Maori and Pacific Island students.
Visibility and representation, she says, are a huge part of driving change. “In order for us to tackle some of the biggest problems in the world, you need representation. You need people at the table” she said.
Fitisemanu said her organisation strives to grow a “pipeline of professionals” so that “people coming in behind can see what’s happening”.
While some of these issues can seem global in scale, or seeded through decades of structural gender inequality, there are some strong steps any business can take to strive towards equality for women in technology:
At Salesforce we believe creating a culture of equality isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s also the smart thing. Empowering women in technology helps us to innovate, build deeper connections with our customers, and ultimately become a better company.
We want to help spark change. Equity means acknowledging that not everyone starts from the same place, so just talking about equality isn’t enough. Equitable action is required.
We’ve introduced a new multi-year global gender goal to reach 40% women-identifying and non-binary employees globally by the end of 2026 and we tie executive remuneration to our representation goals.For more information or advice on how Salesforce is striving for equality, you can read our approaches to global equality here.
First Published 8 March 2023 on Business As A Platform For Change.
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Salesforce regularly releases new features and enhancements that are specifically designed to help non-profit organisations better manage their operations, such as improvements to fundraising and donor management. These releases typically happen three times per year, in the spring, summer, and winter. Each release is referred to by the year and the season. You might have noticed this banner when you log into your Salesforce Org....and been wondering whether you can ignore it…. |
Why is this happening? Enhanced domains meet the latest browser requirements. With enhanced domains, all URLs across your org contain your company-specific My Domain name, including URLs for your Experience Cloud sites, Salesforce Sites, Visualforce pages, and content files. This feature changes domain suffixes (the part after the My Domain name) to meet the latest security standards. My Domain URLs are easier for users to remember and don’t change when your org is moved to another Salesforce instance. What does this mean for you? Time is running out so if you have not had the time to investigate the impact that this change might have on your Salesforce Org, here are some tips:
There are several factors to consider - the age of your Salesforce Org, and the number of integrations and/or customisations. More information about this release and potential impact please read this Salesforce Help Article. If you are unable to tackle this yourself (lack of time or talent) we are here to help, please get in touch! |
Zach Thanasilangkul from Social Driven Impact recently listed a bunch of tools that are free for charities to use and that help you attract and engage new supporters.
- Canva is free
- Mailchimp is free
- Social media is free
- Writing a blog is free
- Speaking on podcasts is free
- Creating key partnerships is free
- Google Ad Grants are $10k/mo for free
I was inspired to add the following:
- Salesforce is free (first 10 user licences)
- Google Workspace is free
- Raisely is free the most beautiful fundraising platform in the world (and a BCorp)
- LastPass is free for one device - although I recommend paying for multi device log in.
- The Mailchimp for Salesforce integration is free.
- Humanitix is a social enterprise and if your event is free the platform is free also
- the Humanitix to Salesforce integration is free
- Amazon Connect (soft phone) integration with Salesforce (Service Voice) is free.
- Twilio has great discounts for charities
- Amazon products are mostly free for the first 12 months - like S3 storage and Amazon Connect
- Shopify is only $14 USD per month if you want a beautiful website but don't need the e-commerce functionality.
PS. Mailchimp is only free for a small number of subscribers but its worth every cent.
PPS. These platforms may be free or low cost but the real investment is in the time it takes to implement and train users. For this you should engage and experienced and trusted partner - like Blaze Your Trail - to help drive user adoption and help maintain these solutions.
Image: Google Workspace for Non Profits
Do you work for a charity or not-for-profit in Australia or New Zealand?
If so, Connecting Ups' Donations & Discounts program exists to save your organisation money!
What is the Donations & Discounts program?
Connecting Up's Donations & Discounts program is a collaboration between us and TechSoup Global—a global charity based in the US. Together, they partner with some of the biggest tech companies in the world to offer heavily discounted hardware and software at exclusive discounts only for not-for-profits.
How does it work?
Once you've registered your organisation and they have completed your qualification, the Connecting Up website will display all the tech companies your organisation can get products from, along with the prices. Every tech company has their own criteria for who they provide their donations to; they take the hassle out of it for you and qualify you for every tech company offer you can access.
What's the difference between a 'donation' and a 'discount'?
A donation is a licence or item of hardware that a tech company donates for free. Connecting Up charges a small admin fee to cover the costs of administering the donation program on the donor's behalf.
A discount is a licence or item of hardware that a tech company sells at an exclusive not-for-profit discount with Connecting Up as the authorised reseller.
How much could my organisation save?
Depending on which tech company—quite a lot! For example:
Microsoft—save up to 92% off RRP
Adobe—save up to 87% off RRP
Amazon Web Services (AWS)—save up to 86% off RRP
Norton Security—save up to 85% off RRP
Zoom—save up to 50% off RRP
I'm convinced! Where do I access these discounts?
All you need to do is register your organisation. They will process your application and get you qualified for all the tech companies you can access within a few business days.
#software #tech #business #charity
]]>In this episode of Executive with a Cause, host Tammy Ven Dange chats with Jessica Macpherson OAM, Founder and CEO of Blaze your Trail.
How did a request for a gift card spark a pursuit of automation, and what did migrant unemployment have to do with implementing digital transformation? In this episode, we hear all about Jessica Macpherson’s digital journey and how technology can support your organisation to achieve more with less.
With a strategic marketing background, Jessica recognised the power of technology to automate and improve business processes at St Kilda Mums. After initially relying on skilled volunteers for digital delivery, Jessica describes her learning journey to becoming more self-sufficient through Salesforce’s free Trailhead learning program. This eventually led her to her current social enterprise, Blaze your Trail.
From this, Jessica explains why organisations should take responsibility for learning the digital basics and continual IT investments to reflect the rapidly evolving landscape. Finally, we tie it together by hearing how NFPs can employ their technology success stories through free-licence opportunities from companies such as Salesforce.
Thank you for listening to the Executive with a Cause podcast. Don’t forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
]]>It will also help you manage services and report impact. This is what Salesforce calls becoming a Connected Nonprofit.
The good news is NPSP is a flexible platform that can evolve over time. You don’t have to bring all your teams onto NPSP at once. You can take a phased approach based on your organisation’s specific needs.
To dig into the details on the features in NPSP that can help you meet your fundraising, program and engagement goals, I have prepared this Trailmix for you - Blaze Your Trail - Introduction to NPSP.
If you are ready to stop using Spreadsheets and want to become a Connected Nonprofit now is the time. Please book a free 30 minute consultation with me to find we can help and read some case studies of some happy customers.
Female Owned is a social enterprise celebrating Female owned businesses in Australia – here to support & empower women owned businesses.
We just joined as Blaze Your Trail is 100% female owned, led and staffed. If we want to get more women into technology there has to BE more women in technology.
Founded in Melbourne, Australia, Female Owned provides certification to female owned businesses, as well as a directory of female owned businesses to provide a platform for celebration.
Check our the Female Owned Website now.
]]>
I am often asked this question: "Do we really need a Salesforce Administrator?"
The answer is YES.
An emphatic YES.
]]>I wrote this blog about how you can check Salesforce Talent. Whether you are engaging the services of consultants or volunteers, or hiring someone into your team you must confirm their skills.
Their key responsibilities of a Salesforce Administrator are to:
But what is even more important is the role of EXECUTIVE SPONSOR.
This person is a member of YOUR team and their key responsibilities are to:
There is no point engaging a qualified Salesforce Administrator if there is no one to lead and guide them.
The best way you can do this is to be well informed yourself. You need to make a commitment to learning enough about Salesforce to understand what is possible.
Leadership plays an enormous social role in accelerating success, while its absence will hinder it.
If you are not using Salesforce every day to encourage, model, and support the development of new ways of working, how can you expect your team to follow you?
Who likes a boss who does not care about what their team does?
So what are you waiting for....???
This is a link to blog I wrote with step-by-step instructions to getting started on leaning on Trailhead - the fun and easy way to learn Salesforce.
Download the Trailhead Go app to your mobile phone and learn from anywhere. You might like to follow my Blaze Your Trail - Introduction to NPSP Trailmix.
Ultimately the Salesforce Administrator will assure your long-term success and ensure that you are making the most of the many new features that are released three times a year.
Here is some further reading and resources
St Kilda Mums rehome new and pre-loved baby goods and nursery equipment to families in need. These donations are distributed as gifts to families experiencing hardship through partnerships with maternal and child health nurses and local social service agencies.
We operate in 3 cities. Clayton in Melbourne, and in Geelong and Ballarat we trade as Geelong Mums and Eureka Mums. Administration is centralised in Melbourne – accounting, HR, fundraising and marketing.
St Kilda Mums has used Salesforce since September 2013. We do not use the NPSP user pack, but rather a customised instance, primarily to process donations, but increasingly for all manner of business processes. I chose Salesforce as we had no budget and other products built for NFPs were so costly by comparison.
(I am now a Certified NPSP Consultant and I always recommend installing the NPSP to charities - it has come a long way in the last decade!)
When we first started to use and customise our Salesforce instance I put a post on our Facebook page asking for help and a local dad called James Kent responded and volunteered to help us set up. He built a simple API integration with Paypal that allows us to accept online donations easily. He actually worked overnight at one stage to ensure it was set up properly for our Tax Appeal for FY14.
Because James was working full time, and I needed more help with further customisation, I advertised on both Seek Volunteer and LinkedIn for IT volunteers. I was surprised by the skill and experience of many of the applicants. Although few were experienced in Salesforce, I did not let this deter me as I knew so little myself, but was keen to learn, and I had a vision of what Salesforce could do.
The volunteers had many transferable skills and we learnt together – me with my vision of how I needed business processes to work, and they with their technical skills. They taught me that many people who are new to Australian struggle to find employment in Australian businesses. Without practical work experience, their resumes don’t even get them into the first interview round.
They were all keen to volunteer as it gave them a chance to get inside an Australian business and work with Australians, learning the quirks of our language and the peculiarities of our workplaces. There have been many laughs as they learn how we do things, and they are always keen to take on new responsibilities and attempt new ways of doing things.
Many want to get their Salesforce admin or developer certification, and volunteering with us means they have plenty of real life experience to apply in their studies. They have often several years experience in IT in their home country and are hard working and as sharp as tacks. They are a joy to work alongside.
Once they complete their certification they quickly find work – for three reasons – they have some Australian work experience to add to their resume, they have me as a reference and Salesforce certified staff are in high demand. The shortest period of time was just three weeks for one particularly smart and engaging volunteer.
One of our volunteer success stories is of Raji who had never worked in IT before. She was a young mum who volunteered two days a week with her daughter in tow. Her daughter would play quietly at her feet in my office and slowly but surely Raji gained the skills and experience she needed. In her home time she completed her certification and she was employed after 12 months volunteering with us as a Salesforce Administrator.
From this idea, Blaze Your Trail was born.
Today, local recruiters refer job hunters to Blaze Your Trail directly and we have a constant stream of dedicated volunteers, often working several days a week as the work they are doing is challenging and interesting and most importantly helping them get the skills they need to get the job of their dreams. I am always delighted when I am asked to be a referee and when they resign their volunteer role, as it means that they are on the next step of their journey to being an Australian.
What we love about Salesforce is the way that the 1-1-1 model is really lived by Salesforce employees. Salesforce staff regularly volunteer with charities as a team, and they assisted St Kilda Mums in the early days by adding the Salesforce for Volunteers App as part of their pro bono program.
St Kilda Mums benefited from very generous workplace donations that are then matched by the company and we feel that we have a very close, collaborative and mutually rewarding relationship with the Salesforce team, particularly now that Blaze Your Trail is a partner.
The annual World Tour is a highlight and it’s wonderful that it is free as I am able to invite all my volunteers along to it. Thank you for being generous in spirit Salesforce, you really do lead the way in corporate social responsibility.
And what of that wonderful Dad James Kent who volunteered to help me way back in 2013? Well he has gone on to develop a product that makes it easy for charities to integrate their donation platform with Salesforce quickly, check it out www.movedata.io
First published on Salesforce.org | April 8, 2016 | Australia | 1-1-1 Model , Volunteering
]]>I would like to thank Mia Pacey for this interview. I really enjoyed chatting with her about all the good things that have happened to me in the last decade or so. We chat about how I learnt to use Salesforce to empower my own organisation (St Kilda Mums), and all the benefits of volunteering, leaning new skills and creating opportunities for myself and others.
Listen on your podcast app or here 🎧 https://buff.ly/3xxAjN4
Also available on YouTube here 💻 https://buff.ly/39SAElB
#LifeWithGoldie #Salesforce #Trailblazer
Leanne White graduated from the University of the West of England in 2013 with a degree in Biological Sciences. She loves travelling and has been living abroad for many years teaching English Language.
One of Leanne’s hobbies is digital art and design which often transfers into her professional life when creating presentations, documentations, or infographics - such as the one she created for Blaze Your Trail to help advertise the volunteer program. She also enjoys hiking, exploring local restaurants, and attending live music and art events.
When Leanne joined Blaze Your Trail in April 2022, she had gained Salesforce Administrator certification and was a Ranger on Trailhead but she lacked the work experience she needed to get a related job.
She contributed 53 hours of volunteering on a number of pro bono projects, and even managed to teach herself how to develop websites on Shopify in order to meet the needs of one particular charity.
Outside of Blaze Your Trail, Leanne worked on two developer org projects to help showcase her Salesforce skills:
Leanne created presentations of her progress with these projects and added them to her personal portfolio - also created in Salesforce.
Leanne is a natural leader, and even stepped in to take a class one day when we were all at a conference. Leanne dialled in from that UK to every Blaze Your Trail class - at 9pm in the evening. With this level of commitment it's no wonder that she has been snapped up quickly at Thomas International.
"Blaze You Trail was exactly the kind of hands-on experience I was looking for. A place where you can share your knowledge and experience with others whilst simultaneously learning new skills from them in return. It was a great community to be a part of and it really gave me the confidence boost I needed regarding my skills, as well as being a great talking point for job interviews. Plus the work you do helps so many different charities which is so amazing," she shares.
Congratulations Leanne!
]]>One of the first things we did when we started Blaze Your Trail was seek Social Enterprise accreditation with Social Traders - the Australian regulator.
We are delighted to report that we have passed the rigorous recertification process after 12 months of trading.
Blaze Your Trail meets the Social Traders Social Enterprise definition for these three reasons:
Did you know that social enterprises must make their income from trading and must distribute 50% of their profit for social good?
From well known names like Who Gives A Crap and Thank you to your local op shop - choosing to buy goods and services from businesses with a social purpose makes the world kinder and fairer.
You can learn more about social enterprises in your neighbourhood on the Social Traders website.
If you are engaging the services of consultants or volunteers, or hiring someone into your team - and you are looking to confirm their Salesforce skills - this is what you should be looking for.
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Author: Mandi Gregory, Manager, People Operations & Growth, MTX Australia
Getting a Start on the Pathway to Meaningful Work
At MTX, we have a passion for investing in our communities and creating new, meaningful jobs worldwide. In September, MTX announced our partnership with Blaze Your Trail, a social enterprise that creates employment pathways for people from migrant communities struggling for opportunity. We’ve been working together to support job-seekers with training, mentorship and a welcome place in the MTX family.
Just two months since our announcement, we are delighted that two wonderful and experienced women have found a pathway back to meaningful work with MTX. We are so proud to welcome Radhika Kosaraju and Sandeepa Epuri, our first two family members from the Blaze Your Trail volunteer program. Their stories embody resilience, persistence and hard work, and highlight the wealth of talent in our communities just needing a start.
By partnering with Blaze Your Trail, MTX is proud to be making such a positive impact, creating outcomes surrounding happiness, health, and economics within the communities we serve worldwide.
Meet Radhika Kosaraju and Sandeepa Epuri
Out of the workforce for a decade, Radhika Kosaraju and Sandeepa Epuri joined the Blaze Your Trail volunteer program to gain new experience and a start towards employment in their adoptive country. After struggling for work and even volunteering positions in the United States, Blaze Your Trail supported these two highly qualified and experienced mothers on a new pathway to secure meaningful work, while providing for their families.
Prior to joining the Blaze Your Trail program, Radhika and Sandeepa had both retrained with Trailhead and were certified in Salesforce. The program helped Radhika and Sandeepa take their skills to the next level through real-world experience, mentorship and leadership opportunities as they worked on pro bono implementation projects for not-for-profit organizations supported by MTX.
Today, MTX Technical Consultants Radhika Kosaraju and Sandeepa Epuri, are working as part of the MTX family as our first two permanent hires from Blaze Your Trail.
Radhika Kosaraju, based in New Jersey, spoke of her experience:
Sandeepa Epuri, based in Houston, Texas, said:
MTX Vice President of Managed Services, Luke Slevin said, “We are excited to have Radhika and Sandeepa join the Managed Services team, bringing a diverse background to provide value to our clients.”
Blaze Your Trail and MTX Influence
Migrants from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds face many barriers to participation in the workforce, particularly women returning to work after a period of time caring for their families. They often struggle to find a job commensurate with their qualifications, experience and skill set, with lack of local experience often cited as an obstacle.
Through our work with Blaze Your Trail, we hope to provide fresh experience, skills training and mentorship that helps break the cycle and provides new pathways to meaningful work and careers.
Blaze Your Trail Founder Jessica Macpherson said, “There is such a wealth of experienced talent in our communities just needing a start to set them on the pathway to meaningful work and a career in tech in their adopted country. I am so proud of Radhika and Sandeepa, who showed such enthusiasm and leadership in their volunteer work with Blaze Your Trail. They are both highly qualified, skilled and experienced and I am delighted that they now have the opportunity to shine as part of the MTX family.”
Ambition for the Future
As Blaze Your Trail’s first Talent Partner, MTX is thrilled to be providing training resources and mentorship while providing an employment pathway for graduates. Radhika and Sandeepa are just the start of our ongoing partnership with Blaze Your Trail to help give support to the many talented people in our communities just needing a start on the pathway to meaningful work. We look to the future with excitement of welcoming more Blaze Your Trail graduates to the MTX family.
Learn more about the Blaze Your Trail program here.
]]>Are you a Talent Alliance Partner? If you are, you have made a commitment to hire 20% net new talent. But are half of them women?
How are you accountable for this? Do you share your results publicly and hold yourself to this goal?
What are you doing to help women transition into technology roles or return from extended career breaks?
What are you doing to support training programs like Salesforce Supermums, or workforce development programs like Revolent?
What about women who have been out of the workforce for some time? Or who head up one of the 1 in 5 households in Australia as a single parent?
How are you supporting women who are mothers? Are you offering flexible working arrangements that support their incredible skill availability during school hours whilst allowing them the flexibility to parent, free from guilt, before and after school times?
What are you doing to support women of little means, stuck in low paying jobs and casual jobs in order to get the flexibility they need to care for their children?
Do you offer paid internships? Do you target women for these?
Do you support charities and social enterprises that offer free training programs like PepUp Tech?
How are you going to increase the number of women in your organisation into leadership roles if you are not hiring them at entry level?
And how are you hiring them if you are not supporting organisations that are training them?
Blaze Your Trail has a proven success record in Australia, helping hundreds of people, mostly women, and mostly migrants, win the job of their dreams. Please support us, so that we can do more good, for more women, and help you do what you have made a commitment to do.