Modernizing Donor Engagement with Salesforce

Our client, a volunteer-driven nonprofit organization, is dedicated to improving the lives of those affected by Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis through patient empowerment, caregiver support, and health professional education. They engage with donors, volunteers and supporters through various digital applications and microsites built on Blackbaud CRM. The legacy CRM had limitations in data collection, management and analysis – affecting engagement, brand awareness and relationship-building efforts.

The existence of fragmented microsites for educational workshops and fundraising programs drove up license fees and payment gateway costs. Further, the system’s inability to understand user behavior resulted in lack of personalization across digital channels. Our client’s internal research ecosystem and data exchange platform suffered from infrastructure constraints, high operational costs, a complex data model and lack of compliance with FHIR/HL7 standards, along with inadequate customer support in the legacy CMS + CRM.

The digital transformation brought substantial improvements to the foundation’s operations. Migrating from Blackbaud CRM to Salesforce, coupled with the adoption of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), resulted in a 3.2% savings on every donation and reduced overall annual costs. A unified 360-degree donor view was established, enhancing engagement and management across chapters. Our upgrade strategies helped optimize license usage, reduce costs and purge outdated data to decrease SFMC storage expenses.

AI-driven features like Einstein Engagement Scoring boosted the Foundation’s marketing strategy and led to more effective donor targeting and increased engagement via personalized emails and automated campaigns. Additionally, a centralized, multi-tenant data platform now drives smarter decision-making with improved data acquisition and analysis.