Case Study | Breakthrough Central Texas

Their Challenge

Fragmented Engagement Data

Breakthrough Central Texas manages a large and deeply diverse constituent database — middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, alumni, volunteer, and community partners, each with distinct communication needs.

Before Mogli, Breakthrough relied on a different SMS solution, but the lack of Salesforce integration created constant friction. As Amely put it:

“There was no Salesforce integration. We had to constantly update information in two places. We're a 12-year program, so there's a lot of fluidity between teams and students moving between them. You'd have to constantly update rosters, which just isn't feasible. We needed something Salesforce-integrated where we're updating only in one location, and as students move between advisors or teams, we don't have to do anything on our end. - Amely Vela-Blalock, Senior Data Analyst, Breakthrough Central Texas

Meanwhile, email remained the fallback for everything else: volunteer hour collection, event RSVPs, and paperwork reminders. But people weren't opening them. Forms went unsubmitted, hours went unreported, and critical messages got buried. Breakthrough needed a solution that could keep up with their organization, where updating a record in Salesforce meant the right message reached the right person automatically.

Solution

The Complete Breakthrough Experience within Salesforce

In early 2024, Breakthrough Central Texas partnered with Mogli to build a comprehensive, automated SMS strategy embedded directly in their Salesforce environment. Mogli now powers outreach across the whole Breakthrough Experience, from the first acceptance text to the last volunteer thank-you.

Student Recruitment & Acceptance

When a prospective student is accepted into Breakthrough, a Salesforce Flow automatically triggers an SMS letting them know they've been accepted and outlining their next steps. 

Annual Paperwork Reminders

Compliance paperwork is a recurring challenge for any student-serving nonprofit. Breakthrough uses Salesforce Flows to automatically send a series of SMS reminders based on when a student last submitted their documentation, resulting in fewer missed deadlines and staff time spent chasing records.

Event Management & RSVP Nudges

For every event on calendar during their 12-year Experience, automated SMS reminders go out one week and one day before the event. For families who haven't yet responded, an additional nudge goes out before the RSVP form closes. These additional touchpoints result in more reliable turnout and less guesswork for program teams.

Alumni Outreach

Breakthrough's Alumni Association regularly hosts events and fundraising campaigns to keep graduates connected to the community that supported them. Mogli enables the team to reach alumni at scale with event invitations and fundraising appeals.

Volunteer Activity Tracking

Volunteers are the backbone of Breakthrough's program, but recording their activity has always been a major pain point. Before Mogli, Breakthrough relied on weekly emails to capture mentor-student interactions, often resulting in low response rates and incomplete records. Coordinators lacked the real-time visibility needed to ensure every student was receiving consistent support.

By replacing broad emails with a simple, automated text-based feedback loop, Breakthrough transformed a manual volunteer chore into a seamless interaction. Leveraging Mogli’s Salesforce integration, the system now automatically "nudges" volunteers to report their hours and progress.

The results were immediate. In a matter of months, reported volunteer hours more than doubled the total amount recorded in the entire previous year (from 156 to 372). And because the data now flows directly into Salesforce in real-time, staff can instantly identify disengaged pairings and intervene before a student loses a critical connection.

"It has definitely helped us: one, continue conversation with volunteers; two, get a more accurate reading of when volunteering stops; and three, get an accurate read on the number of hours that are actually volunteered." - Amely Vela-Blalock, Senior Data Analyst, Breakthrough Central Texas

Results

Multi-Generational Impact

Whether it's more than doubling the reported activity of volunteers or sending a student a congratulatory text upon program acceptance, Breakthrough uses Mogli to ensure that no one is left to navigate the long and complicated process of higher education alone. With Mogli and Salesforce working in sync, advisors are freed to focus on what they do best: empowering first-generation scholars to realize their full academic potential.