THE CHILDREN'S TRUST OF MASSACHUSETTS

The Children's Trust is a public-private organization dedicated to preventing child abuse and neglect in Massachusetts. They partner with local organizations and communities to provide essential resources and support for families.  “We engage thousands of participants each year, all of whom are passionate about strengthening families and improving wellbeing,” shares Brandon Jimenez, Marketing and Events Specialist. “For us, success is not merely quantifiable metrics, but a collective commitment to preventing child abuse and neglect.”

The Children’s Trust offers a wide-range of trainings and events that strengthen families and the professionals who work with them. They offer a variety of programs aimed at promoting positive parenting practices and building strong family relationships. These include home visiting and fatherhood programs, family support training opportunities, child sexual abuse prevention, family centers, and community outreach initiatives. They also host A View from All Sides, New England’s leading family support training conference.

BACKGROUND & GOALS

Ensuring equitable resources for the family support community through events

Preventing child abuse and neglect requires widespread community engagement, support from local parents and programs, and the empowerment of family support staff with essential skills and resources. A key focus for the Children's Trust has been expanding access to free high-quality training, events, and resources that support family wellbeing across Massachusetts. 

Like many mission-driven organizations, the Children’s Trust had to manage rapidly growing programs with limited staff, resources, budget, and time. The addition of virtual events during the pandemic allowed for greater reach but included a steep learning curve for digital experiences, requiring extra support for attendees from an already overtaxed staff.

At the same time, they aimed to grow their marquee conference. “It’s one of our biggest events with virtual and in-person attendees, so we set continuous goals for increasing registration and attendance rates, increasing presenter proposals, and so forth,” Brandon explains. The Children’s Trust knew they needed to better engage attendees in order to continue providing the latest information for those in the family support field while creating a stronger sense of community. They also needed to increase awareness of the positive impact strong families and communities have on children’s wellbeing to continue deepening that impact.

With Cvent's Registration tool, Children’s Trust’s attendees can now self-manage registrations across all of their virtual, hybrid, and in-person events. Fully branded, customizable, and repeatable processes provide a consistent experience. At the same time, Brandon’s team benefits from efficient data management across thousands of events. Attendees can also easily modify or cancel their registration, saving the small team valuable time. Guaranteeing a smooth registration experience is particularly important for the family support staff in attendance. “We want to make the attendee experience as seamless as possible because we know the day-to-day in the family support world is hectic,” Brandon shares. “Being able to register for an event and have it be very seamless makes their jobs a lot easier and our jobs a lot easier too as far as tracking.”

His team can now easily manage multiple trainings and events on one platform – from simple trainings to events with complex registration processes – including differentiating registration paths and attendee types for more personalized experiences. They can also track registrations using code snippets and reference IDs to know where registrants are coming from and which marketing tactics are most successful. The Children’s Trust also uses built-in eMarketing tools in Cvent to help drive registration and boost attendance. Brandon notes, “We’ve utilized event and session email automations, invitation lists, and scheduled reports to save time and standardize communication patterns.” This saves the organization both time and money in not having to use separate platforms for event marketing and event management.

With audience segmentation, the Children’s Trust can send targeted notifications to drive session attendance based on specific criteria. Custom cards and session recommendations help attendees curate personalized experiences, and Brandon’s team can send targeted push notifications to specific groups to drive unique actions. Importantly, attendees can watch live streamed or on-demand sessions directly within the Attendee Hub to further post-event engagement.

Streamlining exhibitor and speaker management across the Children’s Trust's events

They’ve also improved the speaker and exhibitor experiences by using Cvent’s Exhibitor Management and Speaker Resource Center. The Speaker Resource Center centralizes all speaker activities within a single portal, allowing speakers to self-serve and complete tasks like uploading their bio, updating links, and providing materials. Automated task reminders eliminate the more manual back-and-forth communication with speakers, saving hours of the Children’s Trust’s time. 

Similarly, Exhibitor Management enables exhibitors to manage their tasks, access reports, oversee booth staff assignments, and much more via the centralized Exhibitor Portal. Exhibitors can access floor plans, see booth allotments, register staff, upload assets, and manage appointments as admins. These automated tasks ensure exhibitors stay on target with deadlines and deliverables. Comprehensive, on-demand reports mean exhibitors can also easily track lead generation to better prove ROI. “These tools have reduced our need to input presenter and exhibitor information manually, empowering our program partners to input their own content and resources - saving us time and stress – and enabling us to increase the number of trainings offered as a result,” Brandon says.

Brandon outlines the overall impact of these programs by noting, “Cvent has enabled us to deliver experiences that create measurable change in the lives of families, communities, and professionals across Massachusetts.”  He elaborates on the importance of leveraging automated technology to scale their program successfully. “Because of our use of Cvent for trainings, events, websites, integrations, surveys, and forms, we are able to not only expand our reach, but also increase accessibility to tools and resources that strengthen families and improve overall family wellbeing,” he says. “I think it comes down to the ease of access and creating a seamless user experience.” 

LOOKING FORWARD

Brandon reflects on his team’s journey with Cvent, noting how they use as many tools as possible to continuously improve their program with new insights and technologies. He says, “Overall, our partnership with Cvent has been instrumental in delivering measurable change in our efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect.” He’s also passionate about ensuring his team has access to the latest information and enhanced functionality within the tool, taking advantage of any and all resources. “I’ve heavily used Cvent Academy, the Community, and the 24/7 support chat to help me over the years,” he shares. “I think Cvent has dedicated a lot of time to making sure that the user experience for the platform is supported so we are able to do our day-to-day tasks.”

Brandon is eager to see the continued growth and impact of the Children’s Trust across the state. “We are so excited to continue to grow and support as many families and communities as we possibly can,” he notes. “As a result of our work and the impact it shows, we’ve been able to provide support to thousands of families and their children - and Cvent has been one of our tools to make that possible.”