Building a New CRM From Scratch with Capsule Services

By: Amy Matthews, Senior Director, Product Success and Services at Salesforce.org and Jared Henning, Associate Technical Consultant, Product Success and Services at Salesforce.org

TechPoint Foundation for Youth (TPF4Y) is an Indiana-based nonprofit that works to provide equal access to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning opportunities to underserved K-12 students. TPF4Y is a leader in STEM education efforts for the state of Indiana, and has been inspiring students through STEM programming since 2001. They believe all students should have access to experiential learning opportunities that increase STEM knowledge and inspire STEM career exploration.

“Demand for tech sector careers isn’t going to slow down anytime soon, and I’ve seen some amazing raw talent all over the state through our programs,” CEO George Giltner said. “I’m excited to provide equal opportunities of technology education access for all Indiana boys and girls to help them achieve STEM career access and success.”

TPF4Y is entering a new era with leadership and strategic plans. At the same time, the organization is approaching the end of their contract with their previous CRM. Timing seemed perfect to engage the entire staff in building a new CRM with clean and current data.

TPF4Y needed a single source of truth for their data that would give them a 360-degree view of their constituents, allow them to track donors and volunteers, and make data-based decisions on programs. These factors are why they chose to apply for a Salesforce trial org.

A More Efficient Way of Tracking Donations

TPF4Y was using a combination of methods to meet their gift acknowledgement and reporting requirements. As with many nonprofits, TPF4Y leaned heavily on spreadsheets as their primary tool to track donations and sponsorships from their community partners.

This led to some very tedious and repetitive data entry processes that involved moving data back and forth between several different documents in an effort to track the status of donations and sponsorship deliverables. Generating reports was time intensive and took a lot of effort and manual input. Additionally, the legacy CRM hadn’t historically had one designated staff member to ensure data integrity which resulted in duplicate and out-of-date records.

What they needed was a single source of truth for their data that would give them a 360-degree view of their constituents, allow them to track donors and volunteers, and make data-based decisions on programs. These factors are why they chose to apply for a Salesforce trial org. Director of foundation operations, Brei Cecil-Satchwell, dreamt of creating a CRM from scratch. “We need a fresh start,” she said. The goals were to ease the workload from manual processes with better automation, improve trust in their data, and simplify their reporting.

Developing a Comprehensive Fundraising Repository

Tackling a Salesforce implementation can be a big project for small-but-mighty teams like TPF4Y, so they chose to work with us in a Capsule Service — a team of professional coaches and affordable implementation support to help tailor our products to meet their unique needs. During our work together, we set them up to manage their fundraising in Salesforce and trained them on how to use the new system. Technical consultants worked closely with TPF4Y to build custom reports and dashboards to replace the spreadsheets they were using and left TPF4Y with a detailed recommended path for the next steps in their journey. Recommended steps are grouped by the amount of effort required so that TPF4Y has guidance and structure on their path toward success.

TPF4Y has big plans ahead for Salesforce. Their vision is to move all program and volunteer data to Salesforce to develop a comprehensive repository of all fundraising and engagement efforts. Because the Capsule Service provided a solid foundation, TPF4Y has all of the tools needed to execute this vision.

“After an extremely busy and challenging year, it was critical that our team got set up with the necessary tools to operate quickly and effectively,” Giltner explained. “Capsule Services and their wonderful team enabled us to integrate Salesforce into our operations so that we could get back to serving our community at a time when they needed it most. Their team was very patient, knowledgeable, and a joy to work with throughout the process. They knew the nonprofit world, having all worked in this sector themselves, so they knew our pinch points and were able to offer creative solutions to our problems.”

If you would like to support the incredible mission of TechPoint Foundation for Youth you can visit their website.

About the Authors

Amy Matthews
Senior Director, Product Success and Services at Salesforce.org

Jared Henning
Associate Technical Consultant, Product Success and Services at Salesforce.org