Points of Light - Fundraising & Program Management with Salesforce
Points of Light inspires, equips and mobilizes individuals and organizations to take action that changes the world. They are committed to providing the tools, insights and connections needed to ensure the social sector continues to grow and innovate in this rapidly changing world.
Points of Light achieves their mission through products and services that help people, nonprofits, and businesses find ways to serve, get recognized for service achievements, and grow new service initiatives through digital platforms, accelerator programs, and consulting. In addition to this, Points of Light conducts research and provides insights on civic engagement and facilitates convenings to connect like-minded individuals and organizations for collective impact.
Achieving this vision at scale requires a robust technology stack that supports both internal staff and external partners and affiliates. In early 2020, Points of Light reached out to OneTenth Consulting to perform a technology assessment and evaluate opportunities to optimize their technology. After a series of visioning workshops, interviews, and technical evaluations, OneTenth drafted a series of findings and recommendations, encapsulated in a roadmap. Points of Light retained OneTenth to implement all phases of the roadmap.
The Findings:
Despite Points of Light’s growth and impact increasing year over year, the lack of integration amongst data sources was making it challenging to develop a comprehensive picture of each constituent or partner’s engagement. Specifically,
The existing Salesforce system was significantly outdated and not leveraging the Nonprofit Cloud, which offers key features for fundraising and grant management
Program data (applications, engagement, etc.) was housed in disparate systems
Event participation data remained in separate applications
Salesforce and financial systems were disconnected, requiring manual reconciliation
Without a change management and data governance plan in place, systems were not designed to scale and evolve with Points of Lights programming
The Challenge:
The lack of a centralized CRM was preventing Points of Light from having a complete view of a constituent's engagement with the organization. Ultimately, staff wanted the ability to retrieve one individual’s profile and be able to see what programs they have applied to, awards they received, how much they have donated, and what conversations they had with staff. Relationship Managers wanted to navigate to an affiliate’s record and see all the services they’ve engaged with. All of this will allow Points of Light to gain deeper insights about their partners, so they can be served in more personalized and meaningful ways. As the organization grew, it became critical to consolidate these disparate systems into one centralized platform. By doing so, the organization would have one 360-degree view of their constituents and the ability to track engagement and build relationships, creating more opportunities for synergy between programs and development.
The Solution:
During the analysis, OneTenth and Points of Light concluded that the Salesforce platform could meet all the critical needs to support programs and fundraising. Together, they…
Configured the Nonprofit Cloud’s Nonprofit Success Pack
Implemented Salefsorce.Org’s Program Management and Outbound Funds modules
Integrated MobileCause, as their online and mobile giving donation platform
Implemented and Integrated SurveyMonkey Apply and Gravity Forms to support the application and survey processes
Integrated Cloudingo for data hygiene and maintenance
Migrated relevant data from source systems
Developed reports and dashboards
Collaborated for end-user training
Implemented a governance framework to ensure the system is aligned with the organization’s evolving needs
Adhering to OneTenth’s “crawl, walk, run” approach to CRM implementation, Points of Light first onboarded the Individual Giving team to Salesforce, followed by Corporate Giving and Programs. This gave the project team critical insights to Salesforce’s adoption that could be applied to subsequent phases. Now with several months into the new system, Points of Light plans to further extend and enhance their system by integrating additional databases and transitioning to the Pardot marketing automation tool.
Impact:
As a result of our work together, Points of Light can now...
Access a consolidated view of fundraising and program data in one place, both in the cloud and on-the-go
See online donations flow directly into Salesforce without any uploads or manual intervention
Easily send email acknowledgements and year-end donor summaries directly from Salesforce
Easily report on financials, receipting, organization details, and program impact
Manage the full grant lifecycle, keeping track of requirements and upcoming deliverables
Visualize programmatic data trends quickly on dashboards with real-time data
See a more complete picture of a constituent’s engagement with the organization
“OneTenth has been a valuable implementation partner throughout our multi-phase, multi-year journey. They understand the challenges that nonprofits face and bring a wealth of experience in the nonprofit strategy space and how to leverage technology to advance our mission. They are strategic, clear communicators, great listeners and problem solvers, and have deep knowledge about Salesforce products and integrations. They always demonstrated their deep care for us as a client and we felt their investment in our success throughout our engagement with them! —Kristin Whitaker, VP Information Technology & Systems
“It’s been an honor working with the team at Points of Light. We are inspired by their passion to define a new kind of volunteerism, “one that calls on people to give their time, talents, voice and resources in service to build a brighter future for all.” We look forward to our continued partnership in supporting their digital transformation and the impactful ways they enable others to take action.” - Rubin Singh, OneTenth Founder & CEO
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To learn more about Points of Light please click here. And to support their impactful work, please consider making a donation.
OneTenth Consulting is a registered Salesforce consulting partner, offering a full range of services exclusively for nonprofits - from fundraising strategy to CRM selection, to CRM implementation and change management. OneTenth empowers nonprofits by aligning their organizational, fundraising, and technology strategies - providing the tools and insight they need to meet their goals and achieve their mission. Check out OneTenth’s services and schedule a free phone consultation today!