[GUEST POST] Large Nonprofits Can Start Small When Modernizing Fundraising Solutions
Large mission-driven organizations can sometimes be hesitant when moving their fundraising solutions from legacy systems to modern solutions that are deeply integrated with Salesforce. These organizations have usually recently made the switch to Salesforce and are starting to look for fundraising platforms that can leverage the data structure, usability, and feature sets that Salesforce offers.
So why the hesitancy? Online fundraising can be the lifeblood of a nonprofit’s overall revenue, and perceived potential risk from making a complete change to fundraising systems can sometimes be seen as outweighing the benefits of switching to Salesforce. This is why many large nonprofits today are making the transition from legacy to modern fundraising solutions in stages. Let’s look at a hypothetical example.
Pacific Ocean Nonprofit runs a nationally known 5K run series called Run for Surfing. The run series generates $70 million annually for the organization, but revenue has been stagnant for years, and supporters have complained about the out-of-date experience their legacy technology provides. Additionally, the data from the run series is not syncing into Salesforce, but is instead kept in a legacy customer relationship management (CRM) system (the organization is using Salesforce for major gifts and offline donations).
In addition to the run series, Pacific Ocean runs some regional galas, golf tournaments, and giving days including GivingTuesday – all of which are run on separate solutions that talk to neither each other or to Salesforce. The peer-to-peer fundraising professionals at Pacific Ocean are also intrigued about getting into DIY fundraising and tribute / memorial giving, but their legacy solution doesn’t offer those products. Additionally, the organization has a basic donation page on its website that also doesn’t seamlessly sync to Salesforce (they need to bulk upload those donations).
At this point, Pacific Ocean has a couple of choices. It can either plan to change its entire fundraising portfolio to a new, Salesforce-friendly fundraising platform for the following year or it can start small to test out one or a couple of its fundraising initiatives on a new platform while keeping the bulk of its fundraising on the legacy system. Another option would be to launch a completely new program on a new platform, such as DIY fundraising, meaning that no migration of data would be necessary.
After a review process that includes in-depth discussions with Cathexis Partners, Pacific Ocean decides to start working with Rallybound on two initiatives: a tribute fundraising campaign and embedded donation forms on its main website.
Rallybound sets up an organizational account for Pacific Ocean, which will not only allow it to run both campaigns from a single administration portal, but the same admin can be used when Pacific Ocean moves more of its fundraising over to Rallybound/Salesforce, including its run series. The Rallybound admin is set up to arrange different campaigns into groups, all of which can be assigned their own permission sets, including for use by individual chapters and regional events.
Pacific Ocean’s staff can now feel confident that after the proven success of their tribute and donation form campaigns that they will be able to quickly replicate that success by moving its run series to Rallybound and Salesforce from its legacy system.
Learn more
A modern fundraising solution includes the right peer-to-peer fundraising software for your organization. Learn about important functionality to look for in your peer-to-peer software: Read The Nonprofit’s Guide to Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Platform Integrations with Salesforce.
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By Jeff Strnad, Director of Strategic Accounts, Neon One – Rallybound
Jeff Strnad is Sales Leader at Rallybound with 14 years of experience working with Nonprofit organizations to activate their potential through digital fundraising, modernize their engagement strategies and navigate organizational change to make a greater impact on the people, causes & communities they serve.
