Kristi Phillips Advances Nonprofit Missions by Helping Them Leverage the Power of Salesforce

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Salesforce Can Transform
the Nonprofit Industry
Kristi Phillips Utilizes Her Nonprofit and Education Expertise to Help Orgs Realize What is Possible

Attain Partners has worked with hundreds of leading nonprofits across the country to leverage the power of Salesforce. As the world’s leading Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, the Salesforce platform can help you unlock your organization’s full potential and transform the way people interact with you. We enable our clients to utilize Salesforce to streamline operations, enhance communications, and transform digital experiences.

We are familiar with the unique challenges facing mission-focused organizations and use our extensive experience to help nonprofits leverage Salesforce to accelerate their fundraising efforts, expand engagement with their constituents, manage the entire program lifecycle, and measure their outcomes and impact.

To learn more about our nonprofit Salesforce practice, we sat down with Kristi Phillips, Managing Director and Nonprofit Market Lead at Attain Partners, to learn more about her background, how she has seen Salesforce transform the nonprofit industry, and her heart for mission-focused work.

Attain Partners (AP): How did you get into nonprofit work?

Kristi Phillips (KP): My first job out of college was with Teach For America (TFA) as an elementary special education teacher. I joined TFA after a transformational year abroad living with indigenous communities, which reinforced the idea that education is an investment we can make in people that can never be taken away. I graduated college with a clear belief in and commitment to the power of education as a lever to improve society and our collective community.

After a wonderful experience with TFA, I earned my master’s degree in education and then found my way to a small startup nonprofit that was focused on building a pipeline of leaders in the field of education within schools, districts, and other nonprofits in the space.

As with many organizations in their early days, I found myself doing everything from writing curriculum for our program to taking out the trash. Somewhere in my first year, I was tasked with updating the technology we used to recruit and select that next year of applicants for our program. The organization was using Salesforce. I taught myself the basics and pretty soon I found myself as the “accidental admin” we so often hear about. After a few more years living at the intersection of program and Salesforce inside a nonprofit, I eventually made the leap into the Salesforce Consulting ecosystem. And that’s where I’ve been for the last 10 years. I started out solely supporting education organizations and then expanded my focus to the broader nonprofit space using Salesforce as a tool for digital change—I’ve loved seeing how nonprofit transformations can dramatically impact their internal operations, external constituents, and greater communities.

AP: Do you have any standout nonprofit client stories?

KP: Of course! There are many, but the first one that comes to mind is a large nonprofit serving future college students. Its mission is aligned with a key passion of mine—closing the achievement gap and increasing access to college for students from  traditionally underrepresented communities.

This nonprofit is pioneering the idea of using technology to help organizations match students with colleges that have the support services that lead to better outcomes and long-term success. This may include disability services, better academic support systems, and the like. The elements that students really need to ensure they will successfully graduate from college.

I’ve maintained a close connection to this organization and continue to explore how we take this to the broader marketplace to allow other college access and student success organizations to leverage this information. I want to help them grow! For the last five years, I’ve been collaborating with this organization building out a system that we designed for them on Salesforce.

There’s so much potential for this organization to create a real impact. I love being able to support them on growth strategy while also delivering solutions that give them deeper insights into their student population and inform more meaningful conversations.

I think that’s the thing that gets me really excited—the solutions that we’ve built for nonprofits can have nearly immediate impact within the communities that they serve.

AP: Which of our seven core values resonates the most with you, and why?

KP: It has to be Obsess Externally. Attain Partners’ commitment to our community and the sectors we work within is framed by a fundamental belief in education. I love working with like-minded people who believe in the social sector as a means to improve community and society—it just really resonates with me. The need to give back is part of the DNA of this organization, and I love that. It’s how I spend my time outside of the office as well.

AP: What do you like most about the work you do?

KP: I love that I get to meet lots of different organizations. They each have their own approach to how they are going to change the world. They have their own theory of change and vision for how they are going to make this world better for the community they serve.

I love that I get to meet and have my first conversations with them where anything is possible. We can brainstorm endless solutions to their current challenges and dream up ways to make their organization better in order to accelerate their positive impact.

AP: What is one of the most challenging aspects of your job?

KP: It’s extremely challenging when you know the client is going to struggle. There are two parts to a successful outcome. For a client, there’s obviously one part—the technology solution we design and build. But the other part is ensuring the client organization is ready and that they have the structures, capacity, and time to invest in ensuring the project is successful. Clients also require a strong understanding of what ongoing maintenance and management will require.

At Attain Partners, we want our clients to fully realize their return on investment. When I see a client missing one of those key elements to long-term success, sometimes it’s as simple as rerouting the conversation to address overarching strategy first before forging ahead and building a new fundraising system. Or perhaps it’s having the organization undertake some change management activities to ensure all team members are on board and ready for the upcoming digital transformation.

And above all, I am always honest if we are not the right partner for a client. Although this can be a challenging conversation to have, I always want to ensure we can deliver what the client needs. In some cases, they may not be ready for the technology solutions we can implement, but instead need to address other organizational issues in order to really see their organization thrive.

AP: What are the biggest ways you’ve seen Salesforce efforts impact organizations?

KP: There are lots of CRMs and many tools that can deliver pretty reports out there in the market. Salesforce is an incredibly powerful CRM that can deliver almost any report you can dream up, but I don’t think that is the exciting differentiator of Salesforce.

One of my most exciting observations was an organization that was able to utilize some of Salesforce’s predictive analytics to determine which students were at risk of dropping out of high school. We built a solution that enabled Salesforce to take different indicators, that seemed relatively independent, but when combined could predict the likelihood of student dropout rates before they happened.

For example, it tracked a decline in a student’s test scores as well as a greater frequency of absences. This, coupled with a note that the student’s father had recently lost his job, led the predictive analytics to put an urgent flag in the nonprofit’s system indicating an intervention was needed to support the student.

These are the use cases that I find exciting and just so cool about Salesforce. It’s a gamechanger. Nonprofits can put their data to work for them. They can use these tools to make connections between their segregated segments of data. These connections—like the risk of dropping out of school—can have the most personal impact in a student or a family’s life.

To me, that is really powerful, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts

No matter if your organization is beginning its Salesforce journey or 10+ years into development, Attain Partners is here to help you achieve your goals. 

Contact our team today to learn how we can help you advance your mission by harnessing the power of Salesforce. To learn more, check out our Salesforce Innovation services, read case studies about our transformative work, and explore blog posts from our Salesforce experts.

Learn more – Kristi Phillips

Kristi Phillips leads Attain Partners’ nonprofit practice to help organizations leverage technology for social change. Kristi has been working directly with nonprofits to accelerate their impact and deliver creative solutions on the Salesforce platform since 2013.

Before diving into the world of consulting, Kristi worked at Teach For All (TFA), where she served as its Director of Data Management. There, she supported 30+ international organizations with their design, configuration, and implementation of Salesforce. Prior to TFA, Kristi was at Education Pioneers as its Director of Strategic Site Support and Operations where she led new site development, new program integration, technology development, and program operations. Kristi began her career as a Teach For America Corps Member in Phoenix, Arizona, where she taught elementary special education. Kristi earned her Master’s in Education degree from the Harvard University Graduate School for Education and her undergraduate degree in International Relations from Boston University.

Interested in speaking directly with Kristi? Fill out this form to be connected!

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Three Key Reasons Grants Management Expert Gil Tran Joined Attain Partners

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Attain Partners’ Research Enterprise Services Practice Welcomes Gil Tran as Strategic Grants Management and Compliance Leader

Gilbert (Gil) Tran joined Attain Partners’ Research Enterprise Services practice on August 11, 2023, as a Senior Specialist Leader working directly with Managing Partner and Practice Lead Mark Davis. A distinguished and honored veteran of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), we are thrilled to welcome Gil to the team and look forward to leveraging his decades of grants management expertise to serve our clients.

I am ecstatic to have Gil helping to lead our team of grants management experts. A longtime friend and colleague, I know just how good Gil is and cannot wait to see the tremendous results he creates for our clients.
Mark Davis
Managing Partner, Attain Partners

Having only retired from his federal government role a few short months ago, Gil hit the ground running at Attain Partners jumping into client work on day one and creating immediate impact. We sat down with Gil to learn more about how Attain Partners coaxed him out of (a brief!) retirement and what excites him most about joining our team.

Attain Partners (AP): What propelled you to join Attain Partners and continue your legacy of impact?

Gil Tran (GT): There are three key reasons that I knew joining Attain Partners was my best next move.

1. Greg Baroni and Mark Davis.

They are both visionary and imaginative. They strongly believe in the value provided to the clients they serve. Mark and I joined Greg in his unique consulting group for colleges and universities in grant administration at KPMG in the early 1980s.

Greg always stressed that as consultants we are trusted as experts in our fields and with that privilege and our technical knowledge, we must provide services and solutions to our clients that are valuable to them and a great return on their investment. It is a desirable and noble principle that I value. I am honored to rejoin them to provide services to colleges and universities in grant administration. 

2. Rapid growth in grant volume and its compliance requirements.

In the last few years, particularly since 2020 at the start of the COVID pandemic, the federal grant volume has exponentially increased for all grantees, including colleges and universities, as the result of the massive COVID Recovery grants and the Inflation Reduction Act grants. 

Along with this extraordinary and sudden growth, more federal regulations (such as requirements for transparency and buy and hire Americans) are being added and implemented to protect the integrity and performance of the grant dollars. These two factors combined create an environment that is extremely difficult for grantees to keep up with and become vulnerable for proper compliance.

3. Education and knowledge are keys to the future.

Colleges and universities as grantees have the fiduciary responsibility for the grant dollars received. Grant administrators are therefore the key to safeguarding the grant moneys and protecting the colleges and universities from potential fraud and damaging audit findings on its grants.

With my experience at Georgetown University, KPMG Consulting Services, the Department of Health and Human Services Division of Cost Allocation, and the Office of Management and Budget, I feel the need and desire to train and educate the next generation of grant administrators so federal grants money are well spent and grantees do not end up in tough and damaging situations for grant non-compliance.

Attain Partners’ Grants Management Support

Managing your grants doesn’t have to be complicated. Our experts (including Gil!) have the firsthand public sector experience needed to support you throughout the entire management lifecycle. We have deep expertise in allowable costs, proposal submissions, financial reporting and closeouts, and research compliance, including export control. Regardless of your needs, we can help you take control of your grants, stay organized, and move your research mission forward. Learn more.

Meet Gil Tran

Gilbert Hai Tran is Senior Specialist Leader, Grants Management at Attain Partners. Previously, he served as a Senior Policy Analyst with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Office of Federal Financial Management (OFFM).

A 27-year veteran of OMB, Gil has often served as a go-to field expert and is a sought-after presenter who has earned a reputation as a source of knowledge and an engaging industry speaker. Among his contributions in shaping the financial assistance landscape for future generations are: helping reduce the audit burden for both auditees and federal government oversight agencies; playing an integral role in the development of the Uniform Grant Guidance (UGG) and consolidating cost principles in the guidance; and, in 2005, leading the development of the first-ever government-wide waiver to provide relief to grantees caused by natural disasters.

Gil’s professional contributions have been recognized with several awards including the OMB Robert Damus Award, the National Grants Management Association (NGMA) Newton Award, and the Association of Government Accountants (AGA) Frank Greathouse Distinguished Leadership Award all in 2022 as well as the National College and University Research Administrators Association (NCURA) Joseph F. Carrabino Award in 2015. He is widely recognized as an outstanding leader in the grants management field.

Gil received a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from George Mason University, Virginia. He is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Additionally, he chaired the Diversity Committee for the U.S. Tennis Association (Mid–Atlantic Section).

Interested in speaking directly with Gil? Fill out this form to be connected!

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Edge Cases and Equity in Nonprofit Digital Transformation

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Embracing Inclusion for Enhanced Impact

From building or implementing software to creating or altering business processes and defining company policy, almost every organization-wide decision-making process will eventually run into “edge cases.”

Edge cases are the uncommon, rare, and unimportant scenarios that, due to their only occasional occurrence, are not part of an organization’s standard business processes, but also cannot be entirely dismissed. They are the, “What do we do when the situation doesn’t fit the norm?” scenarios. Examples of edge cases include how an employee processes a gift type that your nonprofit organization rarely receives or how a certain interface element will be described by a screen reader.

The theory is, the edge case can be dealt with by using a different process, on a case-by-case basis, or by adding additional software features in the future. The ability to exclude edge cases from the scope of a digital transformation project is critical to keeping that scope achievable—but excluding them can have consequences.

Being able to differentiate critical use cases and scenarios from edge cases is, of course, critical to making decisions at your organization. If a group gets bogged down by trying to account for every possible situation, they will never make any decisions. This is especially true when making software configuration decisions, developing business processes, or planning software features.

But every use case that gets removed from the planning process eventually affects someone and the way they do their work. It’s important to know whose work is being impacted and how dealing with those edge cases—possibly in an unnecessarily inefficient way—will affect their work and therefore their ability to impact an organization’s mission work.

Processes should be representative of your team

Consider the gift processor who will have to tediously process contributions manually or the box office staffer who will have to copy and paste information from one system into another. Will the changes to your organization’s processes or tools add to these team members’ workloads or create bottlenecks for other work? Consider the staffer who uses adaptive technology to help them navigate your CRM. Will that adaptive technology still work for them after the upgrade?

Taking the time to consider the people behind the use cases and involving a representative group in the decision-making process can help with adoption and general team buy-in for any project.

All of this is part of an effective change management strategy, which should always be part of the planning and implementation of digital transformation projects. But, in this case, it can also be a critical step in verifying that the case your core group thinks is “edge” doesn’t turn out to be right at the center of the work for someone who isn’t in the room.

Practice inclusion in project planning

Once your organization begins considering the people behind the edge cases as part of your change management strategy, you may realize there are certain roles more likely to find bits of their work excluded from decision-making—gift processors, front-line customer service workers, people who answer calls from the public, coordinators, and so on.

These types of roles are rarely included in the core team of big projects. Tasks that employees in these roles do once a week may seem, from a distance, safe to exclude from the software configuration planning or design of an interface or new workflow. Surely, those few employees can handle one manual task instead of an automated process, right? Surely, they can handle a few extra steps to get approval, right? Surely, the three staff members who use adaptive technology can sort themselves out, right?

Here is where edge cases meet issues of equity and belonging.

What do the roles mentioned above have in common? They are positions that are relatively low on the corporate ladder, and therefore, given the workforce distribution in general, are often staffed by early-career people, people from historically excluded communities, people without college degrees, and people who grew up in poverty.

According to zippia.com, 68.5% of nonprofit managers in 2021 were white and 70% had a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Since family wealth is linked to both college enrollment and completion (according to Inside Higher Ed’s review of federal data) and white families hold significantly more wealth than non-white families, we can infer that a high proportion of nonprofit managers come from economically secure backgrounds. Only 59.5% of full-time nonprofit staff are white—that implies a concentration of people from historically privileged positions at the top of the nonprofit corporate ladder.

While management and leadership may seem like pivotal roles at a nonprofit organization, it is often the “rank and file” who have the most contact with an organization’s constituents. In many cases, those front-line workers are functionally the face of the organization. While the turnover rate among nonprofit executives is low, the overall nonprofit organization turnover rate is 21% with a majority of those leaving nonprofits citing a lack of upward mobility as their main concern. Turnover of front-line employees has a high dollar cost (up to half the employee’s annual salary) and an even higher mission cost. Turnovers erode trust with constituents who see the faces change, but it means losing institutional knowledge and efficiency, which decreases an organization’s ability to achieve its mission.

For example, people using adaptive technology are doing so because technology solutions, in general, are not built for the way their body functions. If you have trouble with fine motor control, a mouse is not terribly useful. If you have impaired vision, a screen on its own won’t tell you much. These are the people who are, or at least are most likely to feel, precarious at work to begin with.

They may feel insecure in their jobs for a host of reasons from simply being further down in the organizational chart and therefore more “expendable” to feeling like they don’t quite fit in because their background is different from most of the rest of the staff. They may also simply be economically insecure, due to low wages (according to the Center on Disability, the median income for households that include people with disabilities is $43,330 as compared to $68,700 for households that don’t include people with disabilities) or other factors, which can create both an intense pressure to keep their job and a generalized sense of insecurity.

Edge cases create inequities when not addressed

Telling people who use adaptive technology time and time again that the scenario that matters to their work is just an edge case decreases the sense of belonging at an organization. Worse still, having excluded their needs from the decision-making process, you’ve now created a policy or piece of software that doesn’t consider their needs.

How is the gift processor going to feel when her colleagues save so much time with new automation that they go home early on Friday, while she must stay late to deal with the in-kind gifts that the new CRM can’t automatically process? How is the box office staffer going to feel when he must have a difficult conversation with his boss about his responsibilities because the new ticketing system won’t increase the font size large enough for him to read? How is the call center rep going to feel when they can’t keep up with ticket statuses because it is represented only by colors they can’t distinguish between? They are unlikely to feel valued or that they have a future at the organization.

There are no easy answers here. Diversity and equity programs in workplaces exist, at least in part, because the business case for enhancing the sense of belonging among employees is strong. But the challenge of being genuinely committed to inclusion and enabling all people to thrive in a workplace is that the threats to thriving are pervasive.

Even the best diversity program is only effective if it makes a difference to the daily operations of an organization and if its principles of equity and fairness influence the way decisions are made. Thinking about the people whose work is being excluded from an organization’s digital transformation and involving them in the project is an opportunity to put your commitment to inclusion into practice. It can go a long way towards mitigating frustrations and increasing the sense of belonging at your organization.

For a nonprofit that cares about improving the world, that is a worthy goal in itself, but enhancing the sense of value and belonging significantly contributes toward decreasing turnover and increasing employee performance.

Include equity in your Salesforce solutions

At Attain Partners, we actively acknowledge and appreciate the importance of creating an environment in which all team members feel valued, included, and empowered to do great work and share ideas. We work closely with our clients to create a breakthrough vision of the future and execute with purpose and diligence to transform organizational processes, encourage progressive change management, enhance the sense of belonging, and help our clients move their mission-centric work forward.

When working with our clients, including nonprofits, we always design for and consider the constituent experience. For example, we design systems so that users (internal and external) can easily use the tools and fully engage with the organization even if English is not their primary language.

In addition, one of the reasons we’re proud to partner with Salesforce is its commitment to increasing accessibility for low-vision and/or hearing-impaired users. We help our nonprofit clients take advantage of Salesforce’s continual investment in innovation and accessibility.
Kristi Phillips
Managing Director and Nonprofit Market Lead, Attain Partners

Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts

No matter if your organization is beginning its Salesforce journey or 10+ years into development, we are here to help you achieve your digital transformation goals.

To learn more, check out our Salesforce Innovation services and read case studies about our work. Contact Attain Partners today to learn how we can help you achieve your goals by harnessing the power of Salesforce. Explore blog posts from Attain Partners’ Salesforce team.

About the Author

Jaemi Loeb is a Senior Consultant at Attain Partners and a veteran nonprofit leader. Her expertise sits at the intersection between technology and people, tools, and daily operations. She is passionate about helping organizations to streamline their workflows and use data to meet their missions.

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Leveraging Sponsor-Based Training to Build Foundations in Research Administration

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Training the Next Generation of Research Administrators with Attain Partners

Attain Partners’ research administration experts have decades of experience in the field, direct experience working in education, and a successful track record of serving the nation’s top colleges and universities. We now offer in-depth, sponsor-based research administration training tailored to the needs of your institution. We will work with your team to develop a program that meets your needs and allows your institution’s research administration operations to get up to speed.

Learn how Attain Partners works with clients to get new research administration staff up to speed and refresh the knowledge of existing staff by conducting onsite, sponsor-specific training.

Staffing Challenges in Research Administration

Since 2020, in what has come to be known as The Great Resignation, the US has seen unprecedented changes to its workforce, with large numbers of employees leaving their jobs for new opportunities. According to the Pew Research Center, between January and March of 2022, about four million workers switched jobs each month, a trend that predicted nearly 30% of workers would go on to change jobs in 2022.

Higher education and research administration specifically have not been immune to this level of turnover. One look at the RESADM Listserv or any higher education job board will show hundreds of job openings available at any given time. Additionally, there has been a move toward remote work in the field, increasing the number of positions that candidates are eligible for without relocating.

While this number of job openings can be great for experienced research administrators looking to grow in their careers, it has made hiring and staffing sponsored programs offices more difficult for institutions.

Leveraging Transferable Skills to Fill Gaps

Even with the expansion of remote work widening the pool of candidates, it is not easy to find experienced research administrators to fill open roles. According to the 2022 Research Administration as a Profession (RAAP3) survey, 76.5% of research administrators have fewer than five years of experience.

While it has always been true that most people do not enter research administration as an intended career, many more positions are being filled with hires from other areas of higher education or with transferrable skills from other fields. These new hires enter positions with no direct experience in the field but are selected for their ability to leverage skills from different areas of higher education, nonprofits, or accounting fields. Unfortunately, even when a new hire has transferable skills, it can take a lot of time and effort to train a new research administrator to the necessary level so that they can function independently.

Training is Essential for Research Administrators

In part because of the varied paths to this career, research administrators must undergo a great deal of specialized training to be successful in the field. For institutions without dedicated research administration training programs, this can be a challenge, especially with the unprecedented turnover the field is experiencing today.

When positions remain empty, staff are often responsible for covering the workload of empty positions. Workloads get heavier, and to-do lists build up. It can be hard to find time during an already overcommitted research administrator’s day to train a new hire adequately. Additionally, sponsor requirements are ever-changing, so even experienced research administrators can fall behind without regular updates.

Beyond training new hires, learning and development are crucial for retaining your current employees. According to a report released by TalentLMS, 38% of employees wish companies would offer more training that aligns with job responsibilities, while 55% say that they require more training to improve their on-the-job performance. Additionally, 76% of workers say that continuous training is a positive factor when deciding whether or not to stay with their current employer. (Perna, 2022)

Attain Partners is excited to offer in-depth, sponsor-based training to your institution. We will work with your team to develop a program that meets your needs and allows your institution’s research administration operations to reach the next level by providing a solid foundation for both new and experienced staff.
Mark Davis Headshot
mark davis
Managing Partner and Practice Lead, Attain Partners

Addressing Gaps in Research Administration Knowledge with Sponsor-Specific Training

Attain Partners works with clients looking to utilize outside resources to train staff as they face many of the challenges we have discussed. For one of our clients, vacant positions, plus the stresses of a growing portfolio, meant that current staff had little time to devote to training new hires while keeping the office running. Another client utilized training during an organizational restructuring to ensure that all staff had baseline knowledge to be successful in their new roles.

Between these two engagements, Attain Partners developed a sponsor-focused training program that covers pre-award and non-financial post-award requirements for many of the federal sponsors that Universities interact with often: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Education (DoEd). Additional pre-award modules are available for the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Energy (DoE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Attain Partners developed a sponsor-focused training program that covers pre-award and non-financial post-award requirements for many of the federal sponsors that Universities interact with often: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Education (DoEd).

The training started with a deep dive into how to read a solicitation, identify important information, and create a checklist of items needed for proposal submissions. The group looked at solicitations from several sponsors and got hands-on experience navigating the different formats and levels of detail provided by each agency. This was followed up by a session focused on creating and reviewing sponsored program budgets. Staff were given detailed case studies that walked them through common areas of concern during the budget development process, such as calculating faculty effort and cost share, and requesting additional information or clarification from principal investigators.

The remaining sessions were focused on individual sponsors selected by each client to align with the major funding agencies in their portfolios.

For pre-award activities, the courses covered a review of sponsor guidelines, administrative requirements, budgeting, submission systems, and common errors. On the non-financial post-award side, the sessions addressed reading award notices, prior approval guidelines, reporting, and how to process items like no-cost extension requests and modifications. Each session involved hands-on activities and case studies so that staff could put the knowledge they gained to use and work as a team to solve problems. Activities included solicitation reviews, budget development, filling out sponsor forms, reviewing successful proposals compared to the requirements of a solicitation, reviewing award notices, and case studies addressing common areas of concern.

Attain Partners also provided job aids and checklist templates to help the participants incorporate what they learned in training into their everyday operations. As an outcome of our training, staff members are prepared to review RFPs, create checklists, submit error-free proposals to any sponsor, and efficiently set up and manage new awards.

Let Attain Partners Train Your Team of Research Administrators

These experiences highlights the value of partnering with Attain Partners to address the challenges associated with training new research administration staff. By engaging in sponsor-specific training delivered in focused sessions, our client was able to equip its staff with the necessary knowledge and skills to navigate the intricacies of various sponsors’ guidelines and requirements. The hands-on approach to training, coupled with practical case studies and job aids, enabled the staff to apply their newly acquired knowledge effectively in their day-to-day operations.

By investing in comprehensive training programs, institutions can better equip their staff to handle sponsor-specific requirements, reduce errors in proposal submissions, and improve overall efficiency in managing sponsored programs. As the research administration workforce continues to evolve, it is essential for institutions to prioritize the development and training of the next generation of research administrators.

Learn More

Continuing education and training are vital to ensuring that your research administration operations are functioning efficiently and effectively. For more information on how Attain Partners can help your institution with your training needs, chat with our experts directly here.

About the Author

Kathleen Halley-Octa is a Manager within the Attain Research practice of Attain Partners. Kathleen is an experienced research administrator who specializes in pre-award administration, training development, and eRA system implementation. Prior to joining Attain, Kathleen served as the Director of the Office of Research & Sponsored Projects for the College of Education & Human Development at Georgia State University, where she oversaw both pre- and post-award operations for the college’s research portfolio. While at GSU, she co-founded the Access to Careers in Research Administration Program, a cohort-based research administration training program for graduate students wishing to prepare for careers in research administration. Previously, she also worked as a departmental administrator in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and later ran Georgia Tech’s Research Admin Training Program. She has been an active member of NCURA since 2011 and has presented at both regional and national conferences. 

Citations

Kochhar, R., Parker, K., & Igielnik, R. (2022, July 28). Majority of U.S. Workers Changing Jobs Are Seeing Real Wage Gains. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/07/28/majority-of-u-s-workers-changing-jobs-are-seeing-real-wage-gains/

Kerridge, S., Dutta, M., Fischer, M., & Oliveira, C. I. (2023). RAAAP-3 HIBARMA Main Dataset (Version 1). figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21120058.v1

Perna, M. C. (2022, October 12). Why Learning and Development is Now a Competitive Differentiator. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/markcperna/2022/04/12/why-learning–development-is-now-a-competitive-differentiator-and-how-to-get-on-board/?sh=1bedb55b30ff

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Seven Key Components for Smooth Sponsored Program Closeouts

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The closeout process is an integral part of the sponsored award lifecycle—Institutions and organizations carry obligations to sponsors and funding agencies to close sponsored projects in a timely manner. 

Closeouts are closely monitored as part of OMB Uniform Guidance (2 CFR §200), and without effective practices in place, closeouts can fall behind and start piling up, creating future issues with the organization and sponsored awards.

Why Should Awards Be Closed in a Timely Manner?

The closeout process is a collaborative effort between multiple parties that work together to ensure sponsor obligations are met, project work is completed, required reports are filed, and financials are accurate and complete. Failure to efficiently close sponsored awards may put the organization at risk, affecting future funding opportunities for the organization. Sponsors may take corrective actions, suspend or terminate current awards, or withhold future awards to the organization if obligations are not completed within the sponsor’s timeframe.

Closeout requirements differ between sponsors, making it difficult for an organization to initiate “blanket” procedures to ensure an award is properly closed. When you notice the number of closeouts piling up, consider seeking expert support to get your organization back on track. 

At Attain Partners, we understand the headache of an overwhelming number of expired awards—and we want to help get your organization back on track. Our Embedded Talent services can help place talent into your institution to assist with award closeouts, allowing your team to continue to focus on day-to-day operations while we tackle the backlog. We’ve helped countless organizations and have compiled a list of seven key components to ensure a smooth closeout.

Seven Key Components for Smooth Closeouts

1. On-Time Reporting

The sponsor agreement provides timelines for required reports during the performance period. Sponsors may require final invoices, PI technical reports, invention/patent certifications, financial reports, and other reporting documentation to close an award. Submitting reports and sponsor-required closeout documents on time will prevent sponsors from withholding final payments to the award, delaying payments on other institutional awards, and inhibiting new funding to be potentially awarded to the institution.

2. Financial Reimbursement

Nonpayment of externally sponsored projects can seriously impact an organization’s resources. Invoices for sponsored programs may be unpaid for reasons including sponsor complications (bankruptcy), execution issues (deliverables not met, reports not filed on time), or internal administration problems such as invoicing. When sponsored work is completed but not reimbursed, costs must be covered by the institution using non-sponsored funding or indirect costs. Nonpayment of sponsored programs is a considerable financial risk to academic units and may affect an organization’s funding status.

3. Financial Compliance

Implementing a detailed closeout process can safeguard organizations in financial accuracy and relativity of expenses. Regularly reviewing award expenditures ensures costs are allowable, allocable, reasonable, and consistent within the terms of the sponsor contract/agreement to maintain compliance and avoid auditing headaches. Reconciling expenditures frequently can streamline the closing of a project by avoiding trailing expenses that post after an award ends and preventing cost transfers while finalizing expenses charged to the award, sub-awards, and cost share accounts.

4. Account Balance Resolution

Once expenditures on a sponsored program are finalized organizations need to close the final account balance. Grantees are also required to refund unobligated cash balances during the closeout process if the organization is not authorized to retain the funds for use in other projects. If a sponsored program account is overspent, the organization must clear the deficit by using non-sponsored funds. 

5. Cost Share Requirements

Many sponsors will have cost share/match requirements listed in the Request For Proposals (RFP) and award documents. A sponsor may reduce expenditure reimbursement amounts if proper cost share requirements are not met. If an award is overspent, excess costs may be moved to a cost share account funded by non-sponsored funding to properly record the project expenditures. Timely closeouts ensure cost share requirements are met and the organization’s obligations are fulfilled.

6. Subrecipient Monitoring

Subrecipients often play a critical role in the sponsored project’s objectives. If a sub-recipient is behind on deliverables or final reports this can also delay the final report filing to the prime sponsor. Delayed reports and invoices from sub-awards may also affect payments to the subrecipient and encumbrances, making it difficult for the prime award to finalize expenses and submit final invoices to the sponsor for reimbursement.

7. Effort Reporting

If a sponsored award requires additional time past the end date to complete deliverables, a no-cost extension may be requested. However, if a no-cost extension is denied and the PI requires additional time past the end date to wrap up the project, the PI’s effort may not be recorded properly, and the institution is required to cover the costs associated with the extra work. 

Attain Partners – Sponsored Programs Experts

Are you overwhelmed with your institution’s closeout process? Too many closeouts, too little time? Contact the sponsored program experts at Attain Partners to discuss how we can update and strengthen your closeout procedures, provide embedded talent, and boost your closeout process to peak performance.

Attain Partners has worked with institutions to successfully improve business and sponsored program management, including closeout procedures. Drawing on our deep and talented pool of subject matter experts, Attain Partners helps place embedded talent into your institution to ensure operations continue to run smoothly and that you receive optimal funding. We can help you fill workforce gaps with functional and technical experts who understand research administration, financial aid, and Federal compliance.

About the Author

Nicole Hansen is a Senior Associate at Attain Partners with experience in higher education research administration and public administration. She specializes in post-award financial management, fiscal reconciliation, and problem-solving. Prior to joining Attain Partners, Nicole was employed by Utah State University as a Business Manager for Statewide Campuses where she focused on fiscal reconciliation, budget development, and training business services.

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NCURA 65th Annual Meeting Speaker Spotlight: Meet Our Experts

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Attain Partners is excited to be presenting at a number of sessions, workshops, and discussion groups during the NCURA 65th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. With a roster of both new and familiar faces, our team will be out in force! Learn more about our experts, get details on their sessions, and schedule time to connect with them during the conference. They’ll be discussing a range of topics and would love to share their expertise with you.

Are you attending? Meet the team in the exhibit hall at Booth #313 and learn about our industry-leading research enterprise services.

Lindsey Demeritt
Senior Specialist Leader

Having served at both the departmental and then central levels of sponsored projects administration, Lindsey approaches everything from a “how can we make yes happen without putting the institution at risk” perspective. “It depends” is a commonly heard phrase, and her goal is always to facilitate research and reduce administrative burden for the faculty. As Associate Director with the Dell Medical School, she is responsible for standing up a centralized departmental unit that will be prepared to grow as the medical school does, supporting the faculty endeavors under the mission and goals of a school that has been created to “rethink everything” surrounding healthcare and healthcare delivery.

Lindsey began attending NCURA workshops and meetings in 2008 and has been active at both the regional and national levels. She is a regular workshop and session presenter, focusing primarily on pre-award, budgeting, departmental administration, and lifecycle of the sponsored projects courses. She also serves on the professional development committee, is a member of the traveling workshop faculty, and has served on the national electronic research administration committee.

Concurrent Session: NIH Transfers—The Gift that Keeps on Giving
Tuesday, August 8, 2:45p – 3:45p | Fairchild West, Terrace Level

Connect with Lindsey
Contact Lindsey

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Georgetta Dennis, MS, CRA, CPRA, CFRA
Senior Associate

Georgetta Dennis has 18 years of research administration experience, which encompasses both pre- and post-award. She is passionate about learning and training/sharing information with others in the profession. She also currently serves on the Research Administrators Certification Council (RACC) Board of Directors as a volunteer committed to advancing the research administration profession. 

Discussion Group: CRA: Mentoring and RACC Certifications. How Do I Study for the CRA?
Tuesday, August 8, 2:45p – 3:45p | Fairchild East, Terrace Level

Concurrent Session: Master’s Degree vs. Certifications: Choose Your Own Adventure
Wednesday, August 9, 10:30a – 12p | Lincoln West, Concourse Level

Connect with Georgetta
Contact Georgetta

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Benjamin Garvin 
Senior Specialist

Benjamin Garvin has more than 20 years of experience in the higher education research administration field. His years of experience in higher education include the lifecycle of grants and contracts from pre-award, including proposal building and reviewing; to post-award, including award administration to award closeout. He can perform these “cradle-to-grave” functions in a departmental or a central role. Prior to consulting for Attain Partners, Ben worked at Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Science, Brown University Sponsored Programs Office, and Northeastern University Central Office. Ben also serves as the Chairperson for NCURA Region I (New England)’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee and the NCURA FRA 2023 Program Committee. In his spare time, Ben is also a musician and plays in a gospel group and a rock in soul band.

Concurrent Session: The Impact of Incorporating Project Management Skills Within the Workplace
Monday, August 7, 1:30p – 2:30p | Columbia 11&12, Terrace Level

Concurrent Session: Leadership Success Planning and Staff Development: Creating an Effective Roadmap
Tuesday, August 8, 10:15a – 11:30a | Lincoln East, Concourse Level

Discussion Group: Surviving the Mass Exodus: A Discussion for Managers
Wednesday, August 9, 8:30a – 10a | Fairchild West, Terrace Level

Connect with Ben
Contact Ben

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Kathleen Halley-Octa, M.A., CRA
Senior Consultant

Kathleen Halley-Octa is a Senior Consultant with Attain Partner’s Research Enterprise Services practice. Kathleen is an experienced research administrator who specializes in pre-award administration, training development, and eRA system implementation.

Prior to joining Attain Partners in November 2022, Kathleen served as the Director of the Office of Research & Sponsored Projects for the College of Education & Human Development at Georgia State University. In this role, she led a team of talented research administrators who oversaw both pre- and post-award operations for the college’s portfolio. Kathleen began her research administration career at Kennesaw State University as a proposal administrator and eRA specialist. She then moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she worked as a departmental administrator in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, before joining the Central Office of Sponsored Programs. In OSP, Kathleen ran Georgia Tech’s Research Administration training program, serving as the product owner for numerous eRA systems, and oversaw the development and implementation of eRouting, Georgia Tech’s homegrown electronic routing system.

Kathleen is a Certified Research Administrator and holds a Master’s Degree in English from The College of Charleston and a Bachelor’s Degree in English from the University of Georgia. She has been involved with NCURA since 2013 and has presented at both Regional and National meetings. In the past, she has served as Secretary of Region III and Website Coordinator, and she currently serves as co-editor for NCURA Magazine. 

Concurrent Session: Addressing the Great Recruitment Crisis: Providing Graduate Students Access to Careers in Research Administration
Tuesday, August 8, 2:45p – 3:45p | Lincoln West, Concourse Level

Discussion Group: Addressing the Great Recruitment Crisis: Providing Graduate Students Access to Careers in Research Administration (Follow-Up Discussion Group)
Wednesday, August 9, 10:30a – 12p | Dupont, Terrace Level

Connect with Kathleen
Contact Kathleen

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Laney McLean, MPA, CRA
Senior Consultant

Laney McLean is a Senior Consultant for Attain Partners with over a decade of research administration experience. Prior to joining Attain Partners, Laney was the Director of Research Administration for the College of Engineering at Florida State University where she also served on several advisory panels for the Office of Research. She previously served as Assistant Director of a large sponsor-funded research center at FSU and began her career as a grants analyst in the FSU central pre-award office.

Laney is a Certified Research Administrator and earned her Master of Public Administration from Florida State University. She has been active in NCURA nationally and regionally since 2013 and currently serves as Secretary of NCURA Region III.

Discussion Group: The STTRuggle is Real: SBIR/STTR Pre- and Post-Award Pitfalls
Tuesday, August 8, 2:45p – 3:45p | Gunston East, Terrace Level

Concurrent Session: Let’s Make a Deal—Looking Through the Doors of Sub-award Compliance to Make Everyone a Winner
Wednesday, August 9, 8:30a – 10a | Columbia 3&4, Terrace Level

Connect with Laney
Contact Laney

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Susan Wyatt Sedwick, Ph.D., CRA, CSM
Senior Consulting Specialist 

Dr. Susan Wyatt Sedwick joined Attain Partners when she retired in 2015 as an associate vice president for research and director of the Office of Sponsored Projects at The University of Texas at Austin, where she was responsible for both pre- and post-award financial administration units and export controls compliance. She received her Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from Texas A&M University and is a Certified Research Administrator (CRA). She is an adjunct professor for the Masters of Research Administration program at Johns Hopkins University and has held previous academic appointments as a clinical professor in the Department of Educational Administration for the Higher Education Administration Program at The University of Texas at Austin and as an adjunct professor for Rush University in Chicago and The University of Oklahoma, Norman. Dr. Sedwick is a frequent speaker on the topic of science and security, export controls as they apply to universities, improper influence, human capital development, and strategic planning. She has authored numerous publications, including the chapter on export controls included in the NCURA/AIS publication, Sponsored Research Administration: A Guide to Effective Strategies and Recommended Practices, and served as the lead author of the SRAI LevelUp micro-credentialing module on Award Acceptance and Negotiation. 

She is a graduate of Leadership Texas, a past trustee for the Texas A&M University-Kingsville Foundation, and founding president of the FDP Foundation. She is co-chair of the National Science Foundation Business and Operations Advisory Committee. She was recognized as the 2012-2013 distinguished alumnae by the Texas A&M University-Kingsville Dick and Mary Lewis Kleberg College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Human Sciences Hall of Honor. 

Concurrent Session: Same, Same, But Different: Departmental Challenges and Successes
Monday, August 7, 1:30p – 2:30p | Monroe, Concourse Level

Discussion Group: Same, Same, But Different: Departmental Challenges and Successes (Follow-up Discussion Group)
Monday, August 7, 4p – 5p | Northwest, Lobby Level

Concurrent Session: At Your Service: Addressing Interim Staffing and Leadership with Professional Services
Tuesday, August 8, 2:45p – 3:45p | Cardozo, Terrace Level

Connect with Susan
Contact Susan

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Courtney Swaney, MPA, CRA
Senior Manager 

Courtney Swaney, MPA, CRA, is a Senior Manager for Attain Partners with almost 20 years of experience in research administration. She specializes in leadership and management of sponsored projects teams, pre-award, and electronic Research Administration (eRA). She has been an NCURA member since 2003 and has served as Region V Treasurer and on the Region V Mustang Mentoring Program Committee. 

Concurrent Session: At Your Service: Addressing Interim Staffing and Leadership with Professional Services
Tuesday, August 8, 2:45p – 3:45p | Cardozo, Terrace Level

Connect with Courtney
Contact Courtney

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Shacey Temperly 
Senior Manager

Ms. Shacey Temperly is a Senior Manager in the Research Enterprise Services practice of Attain Partners. She is an experienced research administrator who specializes in procedural, system, and control analyses to create operational and financial efficiencies. She has provided various organizational redesign and business process improvement services for not-for-profit and higher education clients.

Concurrent Session: At Your Service: Addressing Interim Staffing and Leadership with Professional Services
Tuesday, August 8, 2:45p – 3:45p | Cardozo, Terrace Level

Connect with Shacey
Contact Shacey

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Chassidy Hall Brings Advancement Expertise to Attain Partners

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Attain Partners Welcomes
Chassidy Hall, Advancement Subject Matter Expert

Chassidy Hall joined Attain Partners in August to serve as an Advancement subject matter expert (SME) working with our Salesforce Innovation team. She joins us from a decade and a half in higher education working to help institutions leverage the power of Salesforce to improve the student experience.

Attain Partners is the Salesforce.org 2022 Consulting Partner of the Year – Education and a Salesforce Summit Partner. Our team of experts continually strives to Invent the Future and Be the Best in everything we do.

We sat down with Chassidy to learn about why she chose Attain Partners and hear about the expertise she brings to her role.

Attain Partners (AP): How did you get into Advancement?

Chassidy Hall (CH): I am a self-proclaimed “Salesforce Geek,” and have been using Salesforce for most of my professional career, from an end user in admissions and recruitment to moving into managing the operations for all student-facing roles. I was lucky enough to be a part of a re-implementation of Salesforce connecting to TargetX to redesign the entire student experience, successfully delivering a 360-degree view of the student, improving their educational experience, and improving the efficiency of the staff. 

After fifteen years on the student side of higher education, I started helping my team at The College of William & Mary with Advancement efforts, specifically using Salesforce and Marketing Cloud. It was a whole new world for me, and I was truly amazed at how much goes into designing and implementing a CRM for an Advancement Office. From there I was given the opportunity to work for an Advancement CRM built on the Salesforce platform. While I did not have a lot of advancement experience at the time, I had 15 years of Salesforce experience, and I was eager to help clients use this amazing technology. 

AP: What did you do before joining Attain Partners?

CH: I have spent the last three years working with an Advancement CRM built directly on Salesforce, and I have been lucky enough to wear a few different hats. I was brought on to work with the software engineering and product team, writing the product documentation, supporting clients post “go-live” and helping our implementation team as they partnered with our clients to implement their advancement solution on Salesforce. I loved getting to learn about such a complex product—how it was documented, delivered, and maintained—while helping clients develop a deeper understanding of this amazing tool.

The aspect of this job I loved the most was working with so many different colleges and universities, each one so unique. I have gotten a front-row seat to their technological growth, learning how to use innovative tools to develop new solutions that help with their overall mission for the betterment of their school, constituents, and community. I have gotten to go from working with a large department, piecing together each story to help develop an overall solution, to working with a single individual who realizes they can now accomplish something in a few hours with advanced reporting capabilities that in the past would have taken weeks and involved several different people/departments. 

AP: What brought you to Attain Partners?

CH: Attain Partners is an organization that believes in its core values and allows those values to drive every aspect of what they do. Getting to work for an organization that focuses its efforts on helping drive innovative technological solutions for education and Advancement organizations is an honor. Working with clients, taking on the challenge of understanding what they need, and painting that picture for them in a way that they understand and can see the possibility of the end result is simply amazing. Working with people to help them understand how technology can help them do something better, or something they have never been able to do before, is what brought me to Attain Partners. 

AP: Which of our seven core values speaks to you the most?

CH: Each core value demonstrates the overall focus and drive Attain Partners dedicates to their clients. Be Bold definitely speaks to me the loudest. What I love most about partnering with organizations and their constituents is helping to turn their hopes and dreams into tangible solutions. Everyone within an organization has amazing ideas and contributions, we get to help them put those pieces together strategically and test them to ensure they deliver results. 

AP: What do you like most about the work you do?

CH: Helping people in an organization put their ideas together, translating their stories into solutions, and delivering real-life improvements to their everyday jobs brings me pure joy. When it comes to implementing new technology people can get scared, nervous, and oftentimes are willing to accept the status quo. I love collecting, constructing, and delivering new business solutions and seeing the excitement it can bring, from re-designing a marketing communication strategy for an annual fund to more efficient ways for gift entry. All of this comes down to being understanding, approachable, empathetic, and a good teacher. 

AP: What are the biggest ways you’ve seen Advancement efforts impact organizations?

CH: Advancement efforts play such a vital role within an organization—over the last twenty years we have seen such a dramatic shift in how institutions are able to secure funding. Universities are getting less money from tuition and governmental resources and Advancement departments had to help fill that gap. Now, in so many colleges and universities they are exceeding that gap, their efforts going beyond the education that is being provided to the students.

The research and community growth that is provided by an educational institution is made possible by its Advancement efforts. In so many ways a university is the core of the community, educating, employing, improving, and growing everyone within the community.  

AP: What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

CH: The most challenging aspect of my job is making sure that everyone’s needs are met. What I love most about this job is seeing the light bulb turn on when a client realizes that we can help them fix a problem, or better a process. The challenge is to make sure everyone has that “light bulb experience,” believes in what we are doing, and is excited about the end result.  

AP: What do you read and watch to keep current?

CH: I live and die by Salesforce Trailhead, and the user community. I subscribe to educational nonprofit groups and ISV partner groups, and I regularly attend local user group meetings. Reading through questions the community has had really helps to fine-tune my skills and find new and innovative ways to deliver solutions.   

I have been fortunate enough to attend CASE and aasp conferences, meeting and networking with Advancement professionals from institutions all over the country. It’s reaffirming to learn what organizations have done with technology to exceed fundraising goals, connect with their constituents, deliver groundbreaking technology, drastically improve their communication plans, and so much more. 

Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts

No matter if your organization is beginning its Salesforce journey or 10+ years into development, Attain Partners is here to help you achieve your goals. Contact our team today to learn how we can help you advance your mission by harnessing the power of Salesforce.

To learn more, check out our Salesforce Innovation services, read case studies about our transformative work, and explore blog posts from our Salesforce experts. Read our latest advancement insights here.  

Interested in speaking directly with Chassidy? Fill out this form to be connected!

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Data Lakes, Warehouses, and Archives: Salesforce Data Storage Options for Nonprofits 

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An overview of the new Salesforce Data Cloud, Data Lake for Nonprofits on AWS, and Heroku Connect

The most important question to answer before moving to Salesforce is, “What data are you planning to store in Salesforce?”

It seems like a simple, and maybe obvious question, but it is one of the earliest and most important questions to consider when moving to Salesforce, because “everything” is often not the right answer. In fact, trying to use Salesforce to store all your data, past, current, and future, is one of the few reasons Salesforce implementations fail.  

Every record stored in the core Salesforce CRM comes with some form of cost. It’s a small cost that can be easy to miss among all the critical decisions that come with implementing Salesforce, but it’s a cost that scales with each row you add. There are three ways to understand this cost:

  1. Performance

    Nobody likes to wait for a computer. With too much data, page loads, reports, and record save time can slow to a crawl, taking minutes or timing out entirely. While working with an experienced partner can mitigate these performance issues through strong design and planning, being strategic in the data you choose to load is the best and easiest way to set your team up for efficient processes. 

  2. Organization Complexity

    Often, more data means serving more constituencies, supporting more disparate operations, and ultimately, a more complex Salesforce instance. The tradeoff here is nuanced—Salesforce offers enormous value by providing a 360° view of your constituents, but not all data adds the same value to that view, especially if that data also requires substantial customization and automation to support. 

  3. Money

    Salesforce storage costs money. Each license comes bundled with a certain amount of storage, when you use it up, you need to buy more. Buying more data from Salesforce is more expensive per gigabyte than many of the storage options discussed below. 

Salesforce is a tool to drive and track relationships and streamline organization processes. While Salesforce can be customized to do almost anything, clearly defining and understanding the role it will play within your organization can help your team avoid the performance and complexity-based problems that come from being everything to everyone.  

Designing Your Data Landscape—Questions to Consider

What value does historical data offer to your day-to-day operations and where does that value come from? Does it matter that a donor gave $10 in 2012, or does it matter that their first gift date and lifetime giving totals are accurate? Does it matter that fundraising staff can edit or kick off Salesforce automation based on that data, or can it be accessible in a read-only form? 

Think about all the sources and consumers of data across your organization. Is Salesforce the primary producer and consumer of data, or is there an ecosystem of related systems for marketing, finance, advocacy, or other operations to consider? Do you have tools to identify and prioritize the best quality data across those platforms, or does each system store its own limited sliver of a person’s information? 

You can think about your data like a pyramid, with the data powering day-to-day operations at the top and with historical data that’s rarely accessed at the bottom. Somewhere on that pyramid is a cutoff point where the data no longer provides meaningful value stored in Salesforce. 

For many organizations, this historical data is most efficiently stored in a data warehouse, data lake, or archives. These are terms that often overlap, so it’s worthwhile to define them precisely. 

Definitions – Lakes, Warehouses, and Archives

Selecting an Architecture for Your Nonprofit Organization

For nonprofits with one or two key systems, an archive of Salesforce data can offer efficiency and cost savings. Attain Partners has designed and built archive solutions that preserve giving histories, summaries, and even allow fundraising staff to view historical gifts while storing all data off-platform.

For organizations with multiple data systems functioning as both producers and consumers of data, a data warehouse architecture coupled with a Master Data Management plan can centralize complex integrations, streamline operations, and improve data quality across systems. For organizations with mature or growing business intelligence or analytics teams, a data lake can provide data science teams with the flexibility to seek new insights from existing operational data.

Leveraging External Tools to Create a Custom-built Archival Solution

Data lakes, warehouses, and archives don’t typically offer the same polished, flexible user experience as the core Salesforce CRM offers; but, in exchange, they are able to store large amounts of data efficiently and inexpensively. A big piece of this difference is the underlying database product that’s powering the service. Salesforce core CRM uses a traditional Oracle database under the hood, whereas these tools use database products designed and built to store data for some of the largest websites in the world, like Amazon’s RedShift, Google’s BigQuery, and Apache Hadoop.

Salesforce Offerings for Nonprofit Data Storage

Salesforce Data Cloud

The newest offering from Salesforce, Data Cloud, draws upon Salesforce’s marketing-focused warehousing and data transformation product CDP, along with the connectivity of Mulesoft to deliver a data warehouse and data lake. Data Cloud provides tools in Salesforce to manage integrated source data and schemas, an identity resolution service to build a golden list of constituents to match all data sources against, and robust segmentation capabilities far beyond what is offered natively on the platform. Data Cloud works best for organizations with millions, or tens of millions, of rows to a warehouse.

Data Lake for Nonprofits on AWS

Announced at Dreamforce 2022, Salesforce has partnered with Amazon to offer a Data Lake for Nonprofits, which streamlines the 25+ steps necessary to connect and mirror Salesforce data in AWS. A quick start offering, for organizations prepared to own and maintain their own data lake in AWS using RedShift or RDS, this may be the fastest way to get a data lake started in AWS. Like Salesforce Data Cloud, the AWS Data Lake can run with tens of millions of rows of data without issue.

Heroku Connect

Salesforce also offers Heroku Connect, which mirrors the data from entire Salesforce objects in a Heroku Postgres database.

Both Heroku Connect and the AWS Data Lake Connector offer the benefit of streamlined setup and configuration and, given the flexibility of Heroku and AWS, either can be a starting point for a custom-built warehouse or an archive solution. From a pricing and performance perspective, Heroku is best in smaller and mid-market organizations, while AWS offers products like RedShift that handle large data tens of millions of rows without performance degradation. That said, the future for Salesforce seems to be with Data Cloud. At the May 2023 New York World Tour, Data Cloud had at least four booths in various areas of the show floor.

Non-Salesforce Offerings for Nonprofit Data Storage

Snowflake Cloud Database

The Cloud database, Snowflake should also be considered with Heroku and the new AWS Data Lake for Nonprofits, as it offers a cost-effective and performant back-end database, with native Salesforce connectors for specific clouds and some quick start tools to begin setup of your data lake or warehouse. If more flexibility is needed, it can also be connected to Salesforce with a data transformation tool like Mulesoft, Talend, or Informatica.

Civis Analytics

Like Data Cloud, Civis Analytics offers a packaged solution that includes a data warehouse, data quality tools, and lightweight master data management capabilities. Civis Analytics also offers a suite of native connectors to bring in data from Salesforce, EveryAction, and Tableau, along with the flexibility of powerful scripting tools and low-level database access.

Archive Solutions

The Salesforce ecosystem also provides a wide variety of point solutions that focus on a specific use case. OwnBackup, CopyStorm, and DBAmp all offer packaged data archiving solutions. These options are less work to configure and maintain, but may not offer all the functionality nonprofits require, like the ability to maintain giving summaries for key donors.

The Salesforce Data Cloud, AWS Data Lake, Heroku, Civis Analytics, and Point Solutions all provide accelerators to speed their implementation, but each offering is a powerful and flexible tool that can handle great complexity in the hands of an experienced developer, like Attain Partners.

Attain Partners Brings Extensive Nonprofit Data Expertise

Data migration and strategy are part of every Attain Partners project. Our experts conduct enterprise-wide architecture and storage solutions integrated with off-platform storage for higher education institutions and nonprofit organizations throughout North America.

We have successfully helped many colleges and universities integrate Salesforce into their existing enterprise-wide Master Data Management design, often with just the client-provided inbound data feed from existing data warehouses and data lakes.

Most recently, we had the opportunity to work with The ALS Association to help manage their data storage costs and improve system performance by offloading over 10 million records into an off-platform archive. The system was designed to provide fundraising staff a seamless, detailed view of donor giving history across data in Salesforce and in their archive. This new system has empowered the ALS Association to track lifetime giving, average gift amount, and other key giving totals to better communicate with donors and expand their fundraising efforts.

The Attain Partners team values our role in helping our nonprofit clients improve efficiencies and reallocate more of their hard-earned dollars to advancing their missions. Almost every Attain Partners project includes detailed work with data, from designing a system architecture that properly accounts for data volumes and growth, to selecting tools and storage solutions that handle those volumes in a performant and cost-effective way. Attain Partners regularly works with tens of millions of rows of data including larger projects like the data migration we did recently for the San Francisco Public Radio station KQED, reaching the 100 million record mark. 

Successful data migration to off-platform data warehouses, data lakes, and archives improves overall system performance for staff and Experience Cloud visitors, while also enabling nonprofit business intelligence and analytics teams to generate a performant picture of organization-wide activity quickly.

If you are considering implementing Salesforce or are already live on the platform and suffering from performance or data-related problems, developing a thoughtful data architecture and strategy based on a strong decision-making framework can be the difference between success and failure for your project and can positively impact your organization’s ability to support donors, fundraise, save money, and spend more time and energy focused on achieving your mission goals. Ultimately, offloading data from Salesforce is an important activity and requires thoughtful energy and a framework for decision-making—Attain Partners is here to walk you through this every step of the way.

Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts

Regardless of whether your organization is just beginning its Salesforce journey or 10+ years into development, Attain Partners is here to help you achieve your goals. Contact our team today to learn how we can help you advance your mission by harnessing the power of Salesforce.

To learn more, check out our Salesforce Innovation services, read case studies about our transformative work, and explore blog posts from our Salesforce experts.

About the Authors

Timothy Fives is the Senior Director of Technology for Attain Partners. In this role, Tim is responsible for providing implementation roadmaps, and technical strategies, and has a passion for emerging technologies that benefit our clients. Tim joined Attain Partners in 2022 and has been implementing enterprise solutions for 20+ years, most recently implementing Salesforce at CRS. Further, Tim is responsible for Attain Partners’ strategic technology team including Attain Partners’ World Team.

Chris Pifer is a Senior Solution Architect serving higher education and nonprofit clients. As a senior leader, Chris provides architecture, design, and subject matter expertise on the technical implementation of Salesforce and relevant third-party tools. His specialties include solution analysis and design, data analysis and migration, and test and quality assurance. Chris has been working in nonprofit tech since 2003 and in the Salesforce ecosystem since 2009. He is one of approximately 200 people who have been recognized globally by Salesforce as an MVP for his expertise, leadership, generosity, and for the positive impact he has had on the Salesforce ecosystem.

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Francis Quinn Brings Project Management Expertise to Attain Partners

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Attain Partners welcomes Francis Quinn to serve as PMO Director for the University System of Maryland (USM) Maryland Connect program

Francis Quinn joined us in June to serve as the Project Management Office (PMO) Director for the USM Maryland Connect (MD Connect) program, managing the complex enterprise transformation for the consortium of five schools—Bowie State University, Frostburg State University, Salisbury University, University of Baltimore, and Coppin State University.

In his role, Francis leads the Attain Partners team to deliver program management, organizational change management, and staff augmentation support as the consortium implements a single instance of Workday Financial Management and Human Capital Management systems.

We sat down with Francis to learn about why he chose Attain Partners and hear about the expertise he brings to his role.

Attain Partners (AP): How did you become interested in project management?

Francis Quinn (FQ): I became captivated by the opportunity to assist organizations in their pursuit of workplace modernization through the adoption of cutting-edge technology and streamlined business processes. Project management became an ideal avenue for me to support these endeavors.

AP: What did you do before joining Attain Partners?

FQ: Before joining Attain Partners, I held the position of leading the professional services team at Unit4 Thesis.

AP: What excites you about joining Attain Partners?

FQ: The vision, the people, and the culture at Attain Partners were all sources of great excitement for me.

AP: Which of our seven core values speaks to you the most?

FQ: This is a challenging question, but if I had to choose, I would say Have Absolute Integrity speaks to me the most. Without integrity, any achievements or endeavors we undertake will not withstand the test of time.

AP: What do you like most about the work you do?

FQ: I am passionate about the pivotal role education plays in shaping a brighter future for everyone. Assisting universities in harnessing the power of modern technology to accomplish their missions is what motivates me every day.

AP: What are the biggest ways you’ve seen projects that you’ve managed impact organizations?

FQ: Once successfully implemented, the projects I’ve managed have had substantial impacts on organizations. They have helped to manage costs, enhance operational efficiency, and enable employees to achieve an improved work-life balance.

AP: What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

FQ: Managing large-scale projects requires considerable time and effort from the entire team.

Learn more – Program and Project Management

Our program management team holds decades of expertise in helping organizations across the social and public sectors deliver services on time and within budget. By leveraging today’s program management best practices—inclusive of Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and the Project Management Institute (PMI) standards—we see the full picture of your program to better align your projects and processes to your strategic objectives, improving your day-to-day practices, ensuring compliance, and achieving your desired goals.

Learn more about our end-to-end program management support services for large-scale systems integration and development programs here.

Learn more – Attain Partners and Workday

Workday is a modern, cloud-based ERP solution for all major industries that provides numerous tools and features to streamline and optimize business processes, increase efficiency, improve decision-making, and enhance transparency.

Learn more about Attain Partners and Workday here.

Learn more – Enterprise Resource Planning

As your organization begins the journey of selecting a new ERP like Workday, Attain Partners understands the importance of delivering the new ERP that will revolutionize and modernize your business processes in a timely manner and within budget. We have the knowledge, experience, and technical expertise to guide you and your team members through the Workday implementation process.

Discover how Attain Partners can help make the most out of your ERP system. Learn more about our services here.

Interested in speaking directly with Francis? Fill out this form to be connected!

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