Team Rubicon, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization committed to repurposing the skills of military veterans for disaster response, is not your typical employer. It doesn’t manage employees as much as it manages volunteers.
Its main challenge is deploying thousands of those volunteers across the world for disaster response efforts with critical training and engagement opportunities, sort of a matchmaking service that gives military veterans the chance to use their skills to help people in serious distress.
Two former Marines, Jake Wood and William McNulty, launched Team Rubicon in 2010, in the wake of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that shook Haiti. Wood and McNulty knew the skills they acquired in the military made them uniquely capable of helping those affected by disasters. They soon realized giving veterans the opportunity to join a new mission of disaster response was also fostering a sense of purpose, community and identity that most were missing after leaving the military.
With a membership base of nearly 35,000 and only 55 full-time staff, Team Rubicon’s original process was highly manual, time-consuming and not scalable for the rapid growth they were experiencing. It soon realized it needed an advanced cloud-based technology solution to efficiently manage and train the hundreds of new volunteers joining the organization every week.
In 2014, Team Rubicon received an invitation from the Cornerstone OnDemand Foundation to participate in its Strategic Partner Program, which provides nonprofits working in disaster relief, education or workforce development access to Cornerstone’s HR software and consulting services.
"One of our guiding principles at Team Rubicon is collaboration, and we foster collaborative relationships with companies like Cornerstone to strengthen our ability to help those in need,” says Wood, the organization's CEO.
Wood adds that when it came to training and managing logistics, Team Rubicon knew it needed a technology solution that pushed the boundaries and could help it scale.
So it implemented Cornerstone Learning, Cornerstone Connect and Cornerstone Extended Enterprise and has since seen remarkable improvements across the board, Wood says. In 2015 alone, Team Rubicon deployed more than 1,300 veterans to 35 domestic and three international operations totaling more than 75,000 hours of on the ground disaster response. The move to cloud-based talent management also enabled Team Rubicon to:
- Deliver critical training instantly to volunteers in any location.
Team Rubicon adds a few hundred volunteers every week. To prepare these volunteers for disaster response, they are immersed in organizational and cultural training from the moment they sign up through its online learning management system (LMS). Completed trainings and certifications are tracked through the LMS so Team Rubicon can ensure their volunteer base is ready for immediate deployment when disaster strikes.
- Reduce individual volunteer recruiting and coordination time from four hours to two minutes.
What used to take hours for Team Rubicon to manage a volunteer’s location, find their airport code, deliver training and certify background checks, now only takes two minutes. This automation has not only had a positive impact from an administrative and logistics perspective, but it has also allowed Team Rubicon to grow its volunteer base without adding resources.
- Improve the volunteer experience through better communication and knowledge sharing.
Team Rubicon uses Cornerstone to create open lines of communication and help build a strong sense of community among its volunteers. It can quickly communicate with its thousands of volunteers and, similarly, volunteers can connect with each other to share insights, ask questions and socialize.
- Track and maximize participation
Team Rubicon can track volunteer participation in engagement and readiness events and trainings. This helps the organization build a sense of purpose, community and identity that so many are missing after military service.
Kim Cassady, vice president of talent at Cornerstone OnDemand, explains that Team Rubicon’s strong culture is a testament to its unique approach to learning and development.
“Learning is at the core of Team Rubicon’s success, and their strategy is to make learning collaborative, fun and engaging to keep people coming back for more,” she says.
Not only is Team Rubicon able to ramp up veterans in a short amount of time so that they’re adequately prepared the moment a disaster strikes, but it’s also able to create online learning communities where veterans can connect with each other and share knowledge no matter where they’re located.
“This approach to learning can be replicated across any organization to establish a strong and collaborative culture, along with a high-performing team,” she says.
