Goals
Implement Salesforce and export data from their old unorganized system
Free the Slaves works to educate the world about the resurgence of slavery and to enable the 21st-century abolition movement. The organization assists communities to chart their own paths toward sustainable freedom, providing capacity building for grassroots and advocacy organizations and education and services directly to vulnerable communities.
Free the Slaves had decided to implement Salesforce, but data exported from their old system was disorganized and unwieldy, insights into development activity were hard to track, and a lack of integration between the legacy Raiser’s Edge CRM and MailChimp meant that the organization was not leveraging email communications effectively.
Fíonta and Free the Slaves worked together to document requirements, identify ways to connect previously disparate functions and teams, and gain insight into donor activity. Free the Slaves is now able to easily identify major donors and prospects, along with accurately acknowledging “soft credit.” The integration between MailChimp and Salesforce has transformed email strategy, intelligence gathering, and success measurement with the ability to target communications by individual interest areas through audience segmentation. And thanks to Salesforce.org’s Power of Us program, Free the Slaves’ CRM license costs have been reduced by several thousand dollars per year.
Challenges
Expensive technology, siloed data
- The legacy Raiser’s Edge system was expensive and did not meet Free the Slaves’ needs to track donor engagement.
- A lack of integration between Raiser’s Edge and the organization’s online payment processing system meant that online donations had to be manually entered into the primary CRM.
- Free the Slaves had little insight into donor activity, and no way to identify major donors and prospects other than total giving amount.
- Because MailChimp was not integrated with Raiser’s Edge, email communications could not be efficiently targeted to specific audiences and the ROI on marketing efforts was difficult to determine.
Solutions and Results
Efficiency and insight gained, costs reduced
- Implementing Salesforce NPSP and a customized online donation form streamlined the online donation process and reduced the opportunity for errors in manual data entry.
- Integrating MailChimp with the new NPSP solution allows Free the Slaves to create segmented lists, better target communications, and collect additional intelligence on donors and prospects.
- Dupe Blocker manages duplicates and bad data, reducing the burden on staff.
- Free the Slaves’ licensing costs have been reduced, permitting those dollars to go to more mission-critical expenses.
