How LifeMoves Is Using Salesforce to Scale Homelessness Services
In the Bay Area, the tech industry drives one of the largest income inequality gaps in the country. Homelessness looms large there, but the size of the problem hadn’t shaken the optimism of former LifeMoves CEO Aubrey Merriman.
“If you don’t believe that homelessness is solvable, you’re working in the wrong organization.”
As the leader of a housing and shelter provider that returns 1,900+ people to stable housing each year in the Bay Area, it’s clear that his outlook on the matter isn’t just a part of his personality. It’s driven by clear results he’s seeing at his organization.
In the five years after Aubrey joined LifeMoves, its services expanded alongside the number of sites it operates. However, the organization’s system infrastructure didn’t evolve at the same pace as its ambition.
That’s why LifeMoves partnered with Provisio to build a scalable Salesforce solution that better supports clients, staff, funders, and community partners.
The Organization: Interim Housing and Support in the Heart of the Crisis
LifeMoves operates 26 state-of-the-art interim housing communities across Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, and provides supportive services and field outreach to the unhoused as well.
Their emergency interim communities provide more than just food, clothing, and a roof. They’re also designed with dignity in mind, including:
Individual units with en-suite bathrooms
Pet-friendly accommodations
Communal spaces for connection
Commercial training kitchens to build job skills
The result is measurable impact: 92% of clients who move to permanent housing maintain stability one year later.
While that’s already encouraging, if LifeMoves wanted to scale that success, it needed modern nonprofit technology systems that could keep up with its ambition.
The Challenge: A Mission That Outgrew Its Systems
As the organization expanded, LifeMoves was operating in two siloed Salesforce NPSP instances: one for program and service delivery, and one for fundraising, grant and contract management, and compliance.
These rigid systems were built more for reporting than anything else, and that disconnect blocked LifeMoves from seeing a holistic view of the organization across programs, development, and operations.
The challenges were:
Lack of unified data to make informed program decisions
Difficulty conveying a unified impact story to stakeholders, funders, and government partners
Uncertainty about the right next step in their Salesforce and technology journey
Sticking with the status quo, as CFO Paul Simpson says, risked delivering mediocre services that would ultimately fall on the backs of clients and staff.
“We've gotten into the cycle where we've got away from, ‘Can we eliminate the problem?’ So we are all doing a great job of, from my perspective, managing a problem. We're doing great work, and we're helping great people. But the scale of the solution is not matching the scale of the problem.”
LifeMoves knew that it could only meet the size of the problem if its data was unified to power better insights, streamline human services operations, and automate processes. And that sort of innovation requires a strategic Salesforce partner who can align a new technology system with your mission.
The Solution: Rebuilding the System Around the Mission
LifeMoves is partnering with Provisio to migrate from those two siloed systems into a unified Salesforce ecosystem, replacing fragmented reporting with real-time visibility across the entire organization.
This system is built on:
But before any new system was built, Provisio began with a deep assessment of LifeMoves’ two existing Salesforce environments to understand what was working and what was not. The teams identified opportunities to consolidate data and eliminate processes that no longer supported the mission, and that system audit was critical in setting the direction of its future plans.
From there, LifeMoves and Provisio developed a 3–5 year technology implementation roadmap that aligned the data infrastructure with the organization’s long-term strategic goals. That vital planning laid the groundwork for a flexible nonprofit Salesforce system that can sustain future growth, meet evolving automation needs, and power AI enablement.
Perhaps most importantly, it connects the full client journey:
Unified Visibility Across Teams – Program and fundraising data aligned in one place to support coordinated action.
A Direct Link Between Funding & Impact – Donations tracked to measurable program outcomes, strengthening accountability and transparency for nonprofit and government stakeholders.
Optimized Shelter & Housing Operations – Improved bed management, streamlined intake, and clearer tracking of client progress from entry to permanent housing.
Workforce Development Integrated Into the Journey – Job placement and retention monitored alongside housing stability to support long-term self-sufficiency.
With stronger collaboration, smarter resource allocation, and faster decision-making, Merriman expressed confidence that LifeMoves’ systems are finally dynamic enough to meet the size of the issue of homelessness.
“If we're really serious about ending homelessness, we have to evolve faster than the crisis that we're trying to solve for right now.”
A Salesforce Partnership That Meets the Size of the Crisis
LifeMoves was clear about what they needed in a partner, which aligned exactly with Provisio’s approach.
As Merriman explained:
“We wanted a partner who wasn't going to build a technology platform for us. We wanted a partner who was going to build it with us.”
The Provisio team traveled to California to meet with LifeMoves in person for discovery sessions, diving deep into systems, processes, and workflows to ensure the solution supported the everyday realities of staff. That means more time to focus on what matters most: helping clients move from interim housing to permanent stability.
And while the transformation is still in progress, this close partnership has ensured the direction forward is clear. For human services nonprofits and state and local government agencies working to address homelessness, this is what it looks like when a strategic partnership aligns Salesforce technology with a mission.
If you’re wondering how Provisio can help support your mission too, we’d be happy to talk about your goals.
