Nonprofit Case Study

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Attain Partners’ Holistic Approach to Digital Transformation for a Large, Mission-Driven Nonprofit

As a firm comprised of innovative problem solvers who disrupt the status quo to change the world and improve the lives of those they serve, Attain Partners was thrilled to work with a large nonprofit ($100M+) when it’s leadership selected us as a partner to transform their long-standing organization and streamline key operations including Fundraising, Marketing, and Incident Response/Case Management. This important organization has a history of service spanning over a hundred years and a mission that is of particular importance in the current climate of the country, focused on fighting hate and helping advance education to prevent hate-driven incidents and discrimination.

The client came to Attain Partners with a unique and challenging set of objectives, including retirement of several key legacy systems housing many years of constituent, fundraising, marketing, advocacy, and other data types across a national headquarters office and more than 20 remote offices. Powered by extreme automation, Attain Partners leveraged our holistic, agile, secure, and customer-centered approach to digital transformation to architect a comprehensive and cohesive solution to address these objectives and subsequently build, test, and implement across four major releases, each building upon the prior, to enhance and expand our client’s capabilities as well as create a robust foundation for future growth and transformation.

Incident Response & Case Management

As a key part of its mission, our client needed to shift from a purely manual process for capturing information around potential activities and cases of hate across the U.S., to an automated one that supported real-time data reporting and modeling. To accomplish this, the Attain Partners team outlined a solution leveraging the Salesforce Nonprofit Service Pack (NPSP) and Service Cloud.

Attain Partners worked closely with our client to identify key data elements and processes necessary to intake, as well as properly route, assign, prioritize, and determine actions necessary as cases came into the system. The automations that Attain Partners implemented led to an easier information capture and reporting capability that resulted in an increase in excess of 60% of reported cases. The automations allow the client’s team to take timely and appropriate action for each case as well as provide critical statistical data. In addition, the data captured through the process is a critical input and allows the organization to continue to inform policies and support its mission to educate and advocate based on emerging trends within the data. The client also used the data from the system we implemented to build other information visualizations of their data including dashboards and mapping displays that show similar cases across the entire country. This interactive, customizable map is the first of its kind and provides valuable information regarding existing hate cases, as well as areas that may become future threats.

Fundraising and Marketing

In partnership with our client and Salesforce.org, we implemented a holistic solution to manage the full lifecycle of fundraising and development operations, empower the client’s ability to engage constituents through a broad set of channels, and manage and leverage its constituent data via a unified platform for the first time in its history. We accomplished all of this with a focus on donor experience becoming increasingly more personalized and tailored to specific interests.

In total, the Attain Partners team migrated tens of millions of records across close to 500 individual sources, onto a common platform that leverages a combination of the Salesforce NPSP, Marketing Cloud, and Classy (an AppExchange solution) for its event management, campaigns, and online donations. We then worked collaboratively to onboard and train 25 individual offices on the Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, and Classy platforms. We also worked closely with the client’s Brand and Digital Marketing leadership team to build email templates that have strengthened brand consistency, timeliness of communications, and ease of audience engagement. Along with the aggregation of data and the use of a common platform, our client also saw their overall email deliverability rate increase from 48% to 94%, has sent over five million emails on the platform since it launched and realized other significant operational improvements through this initiative.

Holistic Digital Transformation: Results that Make an Impact

By conceptualizing and implementing a holistic digital transformation solution, Attain Partners helped our client achieve impactful results with the foundation to continually improve and transform the organization and operations going forward. After working with Attain Partners to transform, streamline, and automate its organizational processes (data collection, managed cases, fundraising campaigns, etc.), our client is positioned to continue to support its mission in a way not previously possible. Additionally, as a direct result of their digital transformation in partnership with Attain Partners, our client raised in excess of $5M via online giving in the first year after implementation and ranked in the top 10 organizations for fundraising on Giving Tuesday in 2018. We are extremely proud that Attain Partners’ digital transformation work created such a positive impact for our client as they strive to accomplish such an important and influential mission.

Click here to learn more about the exciting digital transformation work that Attain Partners delivers to our clients.

The Attain Way

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At Attain Partners, we provide the culture and collaborative work environment that fosters creativity, encourages bold, new ways of thinking, and values a commitment to excellence—producing the best results for our clients and a rewarding work environment for our team members.

How do we do this? We live out The Attain Way every day in our work and philanthropic efforts.

The Attain Way is comprised of seven core values that align with our bold and entrepreneurial approach to business. These core values guide every decision we make and every interaction we have with our clients and those in the communities in which we live and work.

“Our values embody our character that we, as members of an elite professional services company, believe a trusted partner and a client advisor should possess. Our values are not only the foundation of Attain Partners’ culture, but they also provide an inspiring, motivational framework for driving excellence, achieving the best results for our clients, and attaining insanely great results. That’s the Attain Way,” said Greg Baroni, CEO.

The Attain Way: Seven Core Values that Drive Success 

  1. Invent the Future – We believe that hope is a critical ignition to creating a better world. Our clients are striving toward great things. We work with you to create a breakthrough vision of the future and execute with purpose and diligence to secure results.
  2. Be Bold – Our clients face tough challenges, but we believe that the glass is half full. We will confront the current reality, whatever it may be, but maintain an unwavering faith in achieving and delivering a purposeful end result.
  3. Obsess Externally – Our entire focus is on serving our constituent public, including the society at large and the communities in which we live.
  4. Be the Best – We strive to be the best in everything we do, while meeting deadline and budget commitments. We don’t just sell it – we live it!
  5. Team for Speed – True teamwork creates agility. We collaborate with our colleagues and clients, bringing passion, focus and perseverance to our work.
  6. Execute with Discipline – Great ideas are nothing without discipline and deliberate execution. With stunning intensity, we lead by example and create an empowering environment for great work.
  7. Have Absolute Integrity – Our word is our bond. We act with honesty, respect each other and honor all commitments. No exceptions!

In addition to our core values, we pride ourselves on fostering a culture of growth that rewards healthy risk-taking and encourages Team Attain Partners members to advance in their careers.

We continuously invest in our greatest assets—our people. In addition to providing industry-leading employee benefits, in 2018, we took an innovative approach to redefining our career tracks to better align with our rapidly expanding workforce.

Attain Partners’ new career tracks allow our team members to differentiate among unique skill sets—Consulting, Specialist, Client Services, Sales, and Business Services. Utilizing these career tracks allows us to create more opportunities and promotion paths for our people, focus on different strengths and priorities across Team Attain Partners, and better align accountabilities and rewards to support our team members. With an unparalleled career path, Attain Partners is a place for great ideas and the people who have them.

Learn more about The Attain Way and Team Attain Partners community here.

10 Years on Team Attain Partners

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Ask any member of the Attain Partners leadership team what makes our company special and they will all give you the same answer: our people. When Attain Partners was founded in 2009, it started with a core group of individuals who were all committed to doing business better by focusing on making lasting impacts for those we serve.

In last week’s post about The History of Attain, we shared our three founding principles: built-to-last, next-generation, and values-driven. We are proud to say that ten years later, we still run our organization in accordance with these three, driving factors.

One of the key elements in our success of staying true to our founding vision once again comes back to our people. Here is what some of our 10-year employees have to say about what makes Attain Partners a great place to work:

“The people! We hire the best people in the market, and we rally around each other to grow this firm—we’re a team.” – Phil Agee, Partner, Federal Services

“The teamwork and comradery make Attain Partners a great place to work. Add to that the flexibility to balance my work and home life and amazing mentoring I’ve received over the years, and Attain Partners has been a wonderful fit for me!” – Angela Burton, People Operations Senior Manager

“There are so many reasons to love Attain Partners.For me, it’s the entrepreneurial spirit, friendly atmosphere, and seven Core Values that drive our everyday working life.” – Wally Davis, Partner, Education, Nonprofit and Commercial Services

“I get to work with and learn from the true experts and thought leaders in my industry. Not many people can say that!” – David Moore, Manager, Education, Nonprofit and Commercial Services

“I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit that is fostered within the organization. It really motivates people to strive for better service and outcomes for our clients.” – Michael Torbert, Partner, Federal Services

“Attain Partners is about more than the bottom line. Here, giving back to the team and our community is a priority—and that’s meaningful to me.” – Ellen Walsh, Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer

Interested in learning more about Team Attain Partners? See how we make it a priority to invest in our people.

History of Attain, LLC

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History of Attain, LLC

A lot has changed since the paperwork was filed to create Attain, LLC. on January 14, 2009, and we became fully operational on August 28, 2009. From seven employees with a temporary office location to over 700 employees in 40 states plus the District of Columbia, we have grown from a start-up into an elite consulting firm, improving the lives of over 100 clients to date.

Though the company has evolved as its grown, one important constant remains the same—Attain is a built-to-last, next-generation, values-driven company. We were founded on these three, core principles that drive our mission and vision—and today, 10 years later, they remain the cornerstone of our business.

Read on to learn how Attain has lived out these core principles over the last decade as we’ve grown into a top-tier digital transformation firm.

Founding Attain, LLC

Attain, LLC founding partners first came together at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. in the early 1980’s. Peat Marwick’s name changed several times over the years, first to KPMG (after its merger), then to KPMG Consulting and later to BearingPoint, Inc., but the practice our partners built and the quality services they continue to deliver have never changed.

In 2009, Greg Baroni and John O’Neill co-founded Attain, LLC, and through the purchase of a platform of business, catapulted the operation from ground zero to a company with more than 100 contracts and 150 employees focused on securing strategic contract vehicles, growing the team, and reinforcing strong relationships with clients.

Highlights: Key Contract Wins and Milestones

CIO-SP3: In 2012, Attain, LLC secured a prime contractor position on National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC)’s $20B CIO-SP3 Small Business contract vehicle. This single contract vehicle enabled us to establish initial relationships with future clients including Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), exponentially expanding our footprint in the federal market.

Eagle II: In 2013, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified Attain, LLC that it was named an awardee in the unrestricted category on the $22 billion Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions II (EAGLE II) multiple-award indefinite-delivery / indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract. A milestone achievement for Attain, the large IDIQ contract provided Attain, LLC entry into the National Security/Homeland Security market as a prime contractor.

SEC: In 2013, Attain, LLC was awarded our first work with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) Center of Excellence (COE) and Application Management Support (AMS) contracts, including oversight of 55+ Enterprise applications, systems, and websites, including EDGAR and SEC.gov. These projects proved strategic in expanding our service to the SEC.

NARA: In 2015, Attain, LLC won the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Information Technology (IT) and Telecommunications Services contract. Attain, LLC’s largest win to date, our work with NARA delivered a new paradigm of IT infrastructure operations and services to elevate performance and cost-effectiveness across the agency, including our country’s Presidential libraries.

Ranked a Top Workplace: As a result of direct feedback from Team Attain members, Attain, LLC earned the prestigious recognition of being named one of the Washington Post’s Top Workplaces for 2016. We were thrilled that our team members also ranked Attain, LLC #8 on Consulting Magazine’s Best Firms to Work For list in 2017.

Strategic Acquisition: To further our growth, in 2016, Attain, LLC acquired ACF Solutions, a cloud-based technology provider that specialized in Salesforce Technology implementations for higher education and non-profit organizations. With this strategic acquisition, we expanded our digital transformation and cloud-based solution offerings.

CMMI-DEV Level Maturity: In 2018, Attain, LLC was named one of 40 companies in the U.S. to be appraised at Level 5 of the CMMI Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration for software development processes, setting us apart from industry peers and further demonstrating the enhanced value we bring to our clients to achieve mission success.

SEC ONE IT: In 2018, Attain, LLC was one of three companies awarded an unrestricted contract in the SEC’s One OIT project. The 10-year, $2.5 billion contract covers enterprise IT services for the SEC in areas including platform and applications development; operations and maintenance; business solutions delivery; information security; data management and analytics; IT governance; and technology business management.

NCAA: In 2018, Attain, LLC won a large contract supporting the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) facilitating the development of the Association’s strategic plan. Through this influential project, we are making a transformational impact not only on a globally recognized brand, but on how collegiate athletics will continue to evolve across the country.

USCIS VDOS: In 2018, Attain, LLC won work with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) called Verification DevOpsSec (VDOS). VDOS represents Attain, LLC’s first comprehensive DevSecOps engagement, its first engagement with USCIS, and, most notably, the first win that required us to solve a technical challenge rather than write and submit a proposal.

Consulting Magazine’s Fastest Growing Firms: Attain, LLC realized double-digit revenue growth for the sixth straight year in 2018, winning strategic contracts and delivering on our commitment to serve our clients’ missions through more than 300 client projects. As a direct result of this sustained growth, we were listed as one of Consulting’s Fastest Growing Firms for the third consecutive year (2016, 2017, and 2018).

Obsessing Externally

In addition to our client work, we strive to Obsess Externally (one of our seven core values), serving the needs of our constituent public, including society at large and the communities in which we live and work. As we grow, we continue to demonstrate a passion for service through active support of fundraising events and activities hosted by our three flagship philanthropies: The National Kidney Foundation Serving the National Capital Area, the American Red Cross in the National Capital Region, and The Women’s Center, located in Vienna, VA.  In addition to our flagship causes, we embrace a “what matters most to our employees matters to us” philosophy and support a roster of more than 20 charitable organizations important to Attain Partners’ people and the firm’s philanthropic initiatives. (Stay tuned for a future post on August 14th taking a deep dive into Attain’s philanthropic endeavors.)

Attain, LLC Today

As we celebrate our 10th anniversary, we are a leading management, technology, and strategy consulting firm comprised of innovative problem solvers who disrupt the status quo to change the world and improve the lives of those we serve. We are powered by extreme automation, leveraging a holistic, agile, secure, and customer-centered approach to digital transformation, to advance our clients’ missions across the government, education, healthcare, and nonprofit landscapes.

Driven by our three core principles and seven core values, we are more than just consultants—we’re trusted advisors and partners dedicated to helping our clients execute their visions and missions with purpose to achieve remarkable results.

Putting our people first, we have a diverse workforce of more than 700 full-time employees and a 96% employee satisfaction rate. Team Attain currently spans 40 states (plus DC) and we have five office locations up and down the East coast. In addition to serving over 500 clients, we have donated nearly $2.0m to charities for which our team members are passionate advocates. In recognition of our dedicated service to our clients and philanthropy partners, we have received over 25 awards in our 10 years of business.

As we celebrate 10 Years of Attain, we continue to focus on bold, innovative areas such as Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning, blockchain, and robotic process automation (RPA), and will extend our capabilities through Attain’s ecosystem of strategic alliance partners, including Salesforce and Red Hat.

Guided by our core principles, we continue to lead change and help our clients invent the future, by thinking outside the box and imagining the impossible. In 2019 and beyond, we look forward to continuing to change the world by boldly disrupting the status quo and improving the lives we touch.

Salesforce Summer ’19 Release: Nonprofit and Higher Ed Highlights for Users, Admins and Developers

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Memorial Day marked the start of summer and  we have officially entered summer in the Salesforce ecosystem! The Summer ’19 release is in the process of rolling out and includes new features, bug fixes, and some cool new stuff. Salesforce schedules three releases each year (Spring, Summer, Winter) to deliver new features, enhancements, and fixes. This routine schedule lets clients know when upgrades occur so there are no surprise releases that could disrupt core functionality. As with every release, there is a lot to unpack (nearly 500 pages in the Release Notes doc!), but we have sifted through the notes and plucked out highlights that should benefit both Nonprofit and Higher Ed users.  

Upgrades are rolling out May 17th-June 14th, 2019. Head to https://status.salesforce.com/ and enter your instance to see the maintenance notices to view when your upgrade is occurring. You can tell if your sandbox or production instance is on Summer ’19 by the new logo, Codey the Bear and Koa the Dog hangin’ ten on a surfboard.

The full Release Notes can be found online in a searchable format here and also as a downloadable PDF.

Sales Cloud Features

There are many sales-oriented features in Summer ’19, more than the past few releases, but that doesn’t mean that Nonprofit and Higher Ed users don’t have anything to look forward to. As with all updates, feedback from users is incorporated into these features to really enhance productivity and ease of use. If you haven’t visited the Idea Exchange, you can submit and vote on submissions across the Salesforce platform to help mold and build the best product possible going forward.  

Sunset and Replacement of Territory Management 

Using the original territory management feature in your Sales Cloud based org? It is scheduled for retirement in the Summer ’20 release and will be replaced with Enterprise Territory Management. Bringing features into Lightning and expanding territory forecasts will make it easier to get your data into a single page view.

User View Enhancements

Quick Filters on Related Lists 

When you have a long list of items in a related list, filters will allow you to sort by columns visible on the page layout. Being able to break down a related list by status, or date range, or a checkbox value, will help users navigate and work with the specific set of records on the related list they are looking for.  Filters save through the open session on your tab/window and are cleared upon exit.

The Navigation bar has undergone a revamp to make it more user friendly 

Recent records displayed on each tab displayed increased from 3 to 5. This gives users deeper insight into records they have been working on, showing 5 recently viewed records. Additionally, the display has been tweaked to mark section header text in bold and separate each area with a line for a more visually pleasing and easy to scan section.

Search has several updates to help with navigation and results 

Summary number of records on the search results page will help eliminate guessing (or clicking to see) how many records were returned on an object. Your items in the nav bar will also drive the top search results returned, giving you the data you work with most.

Confetti available for sales (or any) path at defined stage

Want to show users a little something extra when a path stage is reached? This new confetti feature can convey that milestone with a little visual panache. It can be set for Sales path, or any path configured in your org.  

Conditional notification on subscribed reports when they meet thresholds 

Want to be notified via a report when data hits critical thresholds? This enhancement brings Lightning report subscriptions up to par with Classic. Enable conditional notifications for summary or matrix reports and only receive notifications when those conditions are met. Great for reporting on specific goals that you don’t want regular updates for.  Examples include record counts or total value that is greater than, less than, or equal to a preset value.

Developer Enhancements

Custom objects for org raised from 2,000 to 2,500

This is the hard cap set by Salesforce, your edition has soft limits that could differ from these numbers.  Any increase from your edition to this new maximum should be discussed with your Account Executive.

Customize how unlocked packages are installed and upgraded 

Developers have reason to rejoice in the Summer ’19 release notes, having the ability to specify whether to recompile Apex for the package only, or org wide, as well as selecting metadata types marked for removal to either delete or deprecate. Less “click and hope” on updates is always a good thing!

Automation Enhancements

Process Builder and Flow have seen a number of enhancements to make it easier than ever to work with these features:

Highlights include:

Reference Custom Metadata Type Records in Process Builder 

We love using custom metadata instead of hard-coding IDs. Now you can reference custom metadata in Process Builder (so Custom Metadata now works across Validation Rules, Process Builder, and Flow)! Find Custom Metadata in the Formula Builder for criteria or actions.

Make dependent picklist screen components required 

Dependent picklists were a new feature in Spring ’19, but they were always optional to end users. Now, you can require users completing flows with dependent picklists to select a value before saving or continuing.

Create Flows from Flow Templates 

New to Flows? Need some help getting started? New templates and descriptions have been added to get you up and running quickly.

Other Enhancements

Flows also have gotten tools to find actions by type or category when building, use Rich Text in display text screen components, choice labels, help text, and more. New errors, warnings and debug details give you more insight into problems that come up during build.

There are so many more great features. Hopefully, this whets your appetite for all that Summer’ 19 has going for it, and gets you excited for the Winter ’20 release!  

About the Author

Mike Chevrette is a Senior Associate at Attain Partners, a management, technology, and strategy consulting firm delivering market-leading results to customers in the government, healthcare, education, and nonprofit markets. He has partnered with nonprofit clients across the globe for the past 20 years and holds 7 Salesforce certifications. His focus is centered on superior customer service – communication, collaboration, comprehension – to create technology solutions for organizations looking to expand their outreach, mission, and goals.

Running Lean with the Boston Marathon

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This post originally appeared on Salesforce.org on March 1, 2019.

 

While January is behind us, to keep New Year’s Resolutions going past February, it helps to get support from friends!

What better place to turn than the Salesforce Ohana for some inspiration? For lessons from some of the most efficient and lean organizations in the world, the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.), organizer of the Boston Marathon, may be one of the best inspirational stories.

The Boston Marathon is the pinnacle of the running world and the oldest continually operating marathon, having started in 1897. With over 30,000 participants annually having to meet strict qualifying standards, running this race is a life goal for many.

From an operations and logistics perspective, the entire B.A.A. is a thing of beauty. The vast majority of participants in the marathon have their qualifying time automatically verified upon registration against the list of millions of results from qualifying marathons throughout the world. Over race weekend, approximately 10,000 volunteers assist with the event, requiring coordination of shifts, jobs, and materials. Their charity program, where participants run to support all manner of charitable organizations, raises tens of millions of dollars every year.

The B.A.A. does all of this with only 30 full time staff:

  • A team of 5 manages registration for the race itself.
  • Two staff manage the activities of nearly 10,000 volunteers.
  • A single charity coordinator manages partners and thousands of participants and their wavers.
  • All of these responsibilities are supported by a single technical systems person, their Salesforce Administrator.

How Salesforce.org Nonprofit Cloud Powers the Boston Marathon

At its heart, the story of the B.A.A. is similar to the story of its participants: continuous improvement, seeking operational efficiency, and selecting the right tools to uncover every bit of additional performance from their staff and their systems to serve more people more efficiently. When the organization was considering replacing their custom built, 20-year-old race management system, it was a serious undertaking, as no out-of-the-box product could be reasonably adapted to meet their strenuous performance, efficiency, and customer service requirements. During their search, Salesforce emerged as the best-suited modern platform to meet their distinct needs.

The B.A.A.’s performance requirements are enough to put stress on any system: thousands of people on the web forms when registration opens with peaks of up to 100 submissions per second. Think rock concert tickets going on sale, not Giving Tuesday. Every one of those registrations needs to be reviewed and passed through a duplicate check, disqualified list check, payment check, qualifying time check, and other checks before the participant can be approved into the race.

Their precision requirements are equally strenuous – while most organizations care about data quality, the reputation of the B.A.A. as an organization is only as good as the data they present to the world. At the B.A.A., data integrity is core to their mission. A data problem is likely to become a story in the national news.

Implementing Salesforce.org Nonprofit Cloud at the B.A.A.

With these critical requirements, the greatest challenge in implementing Salesforce at the B.A.A. was focusing on lightweight, easy to maintain solutions that also provided the necessary streamlined efficiency. This led to several key design principles, which may be as helpful for your New Year’s resolution as they were for the B.A.A., as follows:

  • Focus on the work that needs to happen now, in this moment; don’t try to solve the whole problem at once.
    A single registration for the Boston Marathon involves at least 7 related objects across their Salesforce Org that need to be created or updated and requires some serious processing to run all the necessary validation checks. That said, at the moment when the system needs to perform at scale, the only work that actually needs to happen is to record the submitted registration data and authorize a charge on the credit card. This is a single API call and record insert. Everything else can happen later, when performance is less critical.
  • Learn from and use what others have done before you, don’t reinvent the wheel.
    Nobody had tried to operate a world-class marathon with Salesforce before the B.A.A., but some problems, like processing credit cards or accepting form submissions from the web, are problems that the Salesforce ecosystem has solved well with AppExchange packages like Chargent and FormAssembly.
  • Know yourself, your needs, and where you require structure and support.
    With a single technical staff person responsible for both day-to-day maintenance and large system customizations, every line of custom code carries a heavier maintainability challenge than is true for larger, more resourced organizations. As a result, the B.A.A. implementation focused on using declarative tools like Process Builder and auto-launch visual flows to solve most automation challenges. Custom code was reserved for two key situations: 1) Where a specific task like volunteer assignment required a streamlined user experience, and 2) Where performance requirements or complexity requirements exceeded the capabilities of declarative tools.
  • Know where you need flexibility to break the mold.
    We knew this was breaking new ground in the Salesforce ecosystem, and as a result, many off-the-shelf products made the wrong assumptions around how the B.A.A. needed to operate and were unable to offer the efficiency they required. As a result, the consulting team from Attain Partners decided to focus on tools that self-define as a “platform” rather than a “product” and made as few assumptions as possible.

This April will mark the 123rd running of the Boston Marathon, and the second year the registration, management and operations for the B.A.A. have run on Nonprofit Cloud.

Learn more about how other nonprofits use Salesforce.

About the Author
Chris Pifer is a Principal Consultant at Attain, a management, technology, and strategy consulting firm delivering market leading results to customers in the government, healthcare, education, and nonprofit markets. Chris serves higher education and nonprofit clients as a senior leader providing 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. Prior to Attain Partners, Chris helped mission-driven organizations with their technology and web development needs. Chris holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Minnesota-Morris and lives in Atlanta, GA. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

 

Is Your Nonprofit Getting the Most Out of Pardot?

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This post originally appeared on Salesforce.org on December 6, 2018.

5 Tips for Maximizing Your Marketing Impact with Pardot & Salesforce

With all the challenges facing our world today, your nonprofit’s mission is essential to turning changemaking ideas into reality. Making a difference in people’s lives is hard work, but sharing your message with donors should be easy.

Thankfully, marketing automation doesn’t require a PhD, and tools like Pardot help make it easier to engage donors and to communicate with your volunteers and other constituents.

Here are some quick tips on how to best use Pardot for your nonprofit so you can help your message resonate.

#1 Enable all Salesforce Users to Get the Most from Pardot

Pardot is not just for your marketing team. In Pardot, non-marketing users can easily send personalized emails to constituents using polished, branded Pardot email templates, right from Salesforce. With its easy-to-use interface, Pardot allows your whole team to quickly and effectively connect with your constituents when they want. As a bonus, Pardot pricing is not based on user licenses; it is based on the number of mailable prospects in Pardot. This way, everyone on your team who uses Salesforce can also have Pardot access, which increases your reach and your message.

#2 Immediately Notify Major Gift Officers

Does your Major Gift Officer (MGO) use Salesforce tasks to stay on top of their to-do list? Pardot Automation Actions can create Salesforce Tasks to remind Major Gift Officers to follow up. If a top prospect signs up for an event, an automated action can create a Salesforce Task to remind the MGO to reach out to the prospect and make a personal connection at the event. Pardot automation makes this information available in real-time and allows your team to respond quickly.

#3 Better Results with Prospect Scores & Grades

Every donor wants to feel special, and each may want different things. Some donors may express a ton of interest in your cause, but don’t have the means to make large donations. Other donors may have the means, but their interest is low. By using a combination of Pardot Scores and Grades, you can easily identify your most-likely prospects to be large donors. The Pardot score rates the constituent on their interest based on email opens, form submission, and advocacy downloads. The prospect grade is based on your interest in the constituent. The grade is set by explicit information about the prospect, such as wealth score, age, job title, and geographic location. You can also customize and weight this information based on the indicators you have determined to have the best results.

#4 Pinpoint Constituent Interest

Scoring Categories allow you to assign multiple scores to a prospect based on how they interact with marketing content for a particular topic or category. With this information, you know not just which prospects are the most interested in your mission, but also what part of the mission they’re most interested in. If you know a prospect has a high, distinct interest in a particular advocacy category, you can better tailor your ask.

#5 More Constituent Data Collection

The more you know about your constituents, the better you can tailor the experience to their specific needs and gain deeper insights. Adding progressive fields to your forms allows you to learn new information about your constituents without overwhelming them with questions. Pardot forms will only display fields to a prospect that they have not yet completed. And, Pardot provides the ability to conditionally display a form field only if other fields have previously been completed on other forms. This means the number of fields presented to the prospect is small, keeping conversion rates high while continuing to collect new information from returning prospects.

Continue Your Nonprofit Marketing Journey

Great nonprofit marketing is about understanding what your constituents want to hear about, and sharing what they want to hear, when they want to hear it. And for today’s nonprofit organizations, delivering a top-notch experience to constituents is no longer optional. As noted in the Nonprofit Trends Report from Salesforce.org and Salesforce Research, 64% of nonprofit leaders are reporting an increased demand for transparency from their donors.

How can you be more transparent about your mission? This Center of Excellence guide provides a high-level look at how your nonprofit can improve your digital marketing efforts to better engage your supporters. Continue your marketing journey with this guide.

About the Author
Anne Early is a Principal Consultant at Attain. Attain Partners is a management, technology, and strategy consulting firm delivering market leading results to customers in education, nonprofit, government and healthcare. The expertise of Attain Partners’ Salesforce practice is focused on higher education and nonprofit Salesforce implementations. Anne has developed deep expertise in Salesforce holding 14 Salesforce certifications including specializations in Marketing Cloud and Pardot. Anne has worked with many nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions to help them achieve their missions through engaging their constituents in more efficient and effective ways.

 

Ten Tips for Migrating Data from Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack - Preparing for the Big Move

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Moving from one CRM system to another is never easy. There’s all the new and different functionality to learn and explore, the new lingo to figure out, and the biggie—data migration. Future business processes and the mapping of your data go hand-in-hand. No matter what your business processes will be, there are features and functions in Raiser’s Edge (RE) that most organizations use when they move to Salesforce (SF). Here are 10 tips for planning for your move to SF that apply to most RE users.

1.       Relationships

  • Review the relationships in Raiser’s Edge (RE) and decide which relationships are worth keeping. (Are relationships and reciprocal relationship fields required/are they consistently populated?) Either delete or don’t extract for conversion the relationships you don’t need.
  • There is no such thing as a “non-constituent” in Salesforce (SF). It is, or it is not; there is no in between. Ideally, you already completed this in the step above. Take the relationships you deem important and where you see non-constituents, turn them into constituents.
  • Review relationship and reciprocal relationship code values and clean them up (do you have “husband”, “wife”, “spouse”, and do you really need all three?).
  • People to People relationships from RE are relationships. Org to People relationships from RE are affiliations. There are no Org-to-Org relationships in SF “out-of-the-box”. There are ways to handle this that aren’t too difficult to set up, but just know that you’re going to have to manage this.

2.       Attributes

These seem harmless enough. They are just custom RE fields, right? They are actually lots and lots of “child tables” and you are going to have to find a home for each one you want to keep.

  • The first thing is to figure out where they are lurking: Constituents, Gifts, Events, Event Participants, etc.
  • Once you know where they all are, decide which ones you need to keep. Can some be left behind because they haven’t been kept up or used in a very long time?
  • Where will these attributes go in SF? You’d be surprised how varied the target locations can be. Attributes can end up getting turned into simple picklist fields on contacts, or campaigns and campaign members, or even affiliations. But these all require careful mapping and prep work to prepare the load files.

3.       Constituent codes

You are going to need to do the same kind of work you did with attributes. What condition is the constituent code table in? Is this a short, clean list or a long one with redundant values, some of which haven’t been used in ages? Are you using these not only to characterize an organization or person (“Foundation”, “Parent”), but also track their association with your organization (Trustee 1/1/2007-12/31/2008)?

  • How many constituent codes are actively being used and which ones do you really need? (This is a recurring theme, if you haven’t noticed – do you really need that? Not suggesting you discard necessary data, like GIFTS, but moving to a new system is a great time to trim the fat and get rid of lots of old, bad, and unnecessary data.)
  • Where will these go in SF? Primary constituencies often lend themselves to the org type and contact type picklists, but then you’ll have to figure out what to do with all the other values, especially the ones like Trustee, that contain start and end dates. Those may also end up being affiliations, but the main point here, as with attributes, is planning, mapping, and prep work.

4.       Is spouse flagged?

Yes, this is on relationships, but I mention this separately because this will do two things for you.

  • Use this to make sure you really have one spouse/partner per “household.” There is a constraint in RE that will prevent you from having more than one “is spouse” relationship flagged per person.
  • The “is spouse” flag can be used as the basis to create household accounts in SF. (You can have the “is spouse” flag checked and the relationship/reciprocal values can be “Partner” or “Spouse/Partner,” whatever you like. The main point is that RE treats them as a household if you are using the flag. And you can then build your data pulls based on this as well.)

5.       Addressees/salutations

There are two configurable fields on the Household account in the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP): the formal greeting and the informal greeting. You can configure those and that’s the “formula” that is used on all Household account records. You can manually override as necessary. Other than that, there is no true comparable functionality in NPSP like the addressees/salutations formulas in RE.

  • Are addressees/salutations in RE heavily used by your organization? If so, do you need to bring over all addressees/salutation types, or just some of them? You will need to pull the text version along with the type.
  • Once you know which addressees/salutations you wanted, what’s the long-term game plan? If addressees/salutations are used heavily, but only a few types are used, then you can probably live with some custom fields on the contact and the household. If there are many, many types of addressees/salutations, it may be best to consider a custom object to house them. And no matter where these fields are located, the auto-generation of the values within them needs to be built out. There may be staff in-house who can build some processes that will do that, or you may need assistance.

6.       Campaigns

The term “campaign” causes a lot of confusion between the two systems. RE has campaigns, appeals, and packages. SF has a hierarchical system of campaigns, and the most common way of moving data over is to move appeals and packages (see below) to SF campaigns. So, what to do with RE campaigns? It depends on how they’re being used in RE. If you use RE campaigns as overarching marketing efforts, and appeals roll up to specific campaigns, then you can likely convert your RE campaigns as SF campaigns. Some organizations use campaigns as reporting buckets, and their campaigns and appeals relate in a mixy-matchy way, where any appeal can be associated with any campaign. Does this describe your organization?

If you are in a “mixy-matchy” situation, any appeal can be associated with any campaign, or some appeals can be associated with several different campaigns, there is no true comparable feature like this in NPSP. However, you are not without options. You just need to have a plan. Will a custom field somewhere be adequate, or do you need a full-blown custom object? Do you have an internal team who can build this out for you, or do you need help? How you use the field in RE will have an impact on how you build your solution in SF.

7.       Appeals/packages

Appeals and packages, as noted above in section six, typically move to SF campaigns. If you are not using packages in RE, this will be a pretty straightforward move. If you are using packages, it will take some planning to move everything over so you can report on them how you would like. (Packages are not required to have unique names in RE based on the appeal they are associated with.)

8.       Addresses

Yes, you can bring over multiple address types and old addresses, but how many do you really need? Also note that in NPSP, the address object is connected primarily to the Household, and then the default (RE preferred) address “rolls” to the contacts in the Household (unless a contact is tagged so this doesn’t happen). All other addresses reside in the address object, which is connected to the Household. If you have addresses that belong to one specific contact only in the Household, and it is not the default address for the contact, or are a business address that needs to be associated with the employer info as well as the contact, you will need custom configuration to accommodate this.

9.       Phone numbers/emails

There are a set number of phone and email fields available in SF, and they are for current values only. If you have a lot of different phone and email types, think about whether you really need that many. (Do you need “Assistant’s Summer House Fax Number”? Do you have “Home,” “Home Phone,” and “Home Telephone”?). If you do,

  • Clean up your types so they are consistent and not redundant
  • Find additional places to store them. These may simply be additional fields on the account or contact.

If you are in the habit of keeping old or invalid phone numbers and email addresses, consider whether you need to continue to do this. If you decide that you do, (and there may be legitimate reasons to do this), you will need to find a place (such as a custom object) to store these and come up with a plan to move outdated phones and emails to this place when new phones and emails are added to a record.

10.   Deduplicate records

Definitely run a deduplication job on your records, especially if non-constituents from relationships have been turned into constituents. There are deduplication processes in SF, but the overall conversion and validation process will be less confusing if these have been deduplicated before attempting to move the data.

Still feeling confused? Get help! There are lots of former RE users on the Power of Us Hub who will be happy to share their experiences. There are Salesforce User groups in many metropolitan areas where you can solicit advice and suggestions from others. And if the kind of assistance you need is more hands-on, there are many, many Salesforce consultants (it’s a popular system)! Whether technical, business process design, nonprofit expertise, or all of the above are desired, we have consultants and implementation partners who are ready to help. Contact [email protected] to learn more.

_____________________________________________

Wendy Jaccard

Principal Consultant, Salesforce Services Group

Attain Partners 

Wendy Jaccard is a Principal Consultant at Attain Partners. Attain Partners is a management, technology, and strategy consulting firm delivering market-leading results to customers in education, nonprofit, government, and healthcare. Wendy has developed deep expertise in Salesforce and has worked with many nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions to help them achieve their missions by engaging their constituents in more efficient and effective ways. Specifically, she has worked on many implementation projects involving Salesforce and Raiser’s Edge data conversions while at Blackbaud, Inc. and Attain.

 

“My Automation is Breaking My Import!” - Best Practices for Data Import in Automated Orgs

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Importing data into your Salesforce org can be stressful–requiring lots of planning, mapping and testing. Yes, the real stress comes after you run the report.

Suddenly, your co-workers are complaining about the thousand extra chatter notifications they’re getting, and to-do tasks are popping up on cases that were resolved 10 years ago. Why? You didn’t turn off your automation. And, no wonder as switching if off for every import is time-consuming and error-prone. There has to be a better way!

And there is–it’s my new favorite trick and involves making Salesforce ignore automation and validation rules for the user who is performing the import. I’ll walk you through the most basic way to do this in the blog. Simply follow the four steps that I’ve detailed below to make the magic happen.

1 – Mark a User as Automation Exempt

My goal is to make Salesforce ignore automation and validation rules for the user performing the import. I’ll walk you through the most basic way to do this.

First, make a checkbox on the User object. I called it Automation Exempt in my org, so if you want to be able to copy and paste my formulas, name it the same thing.

Object: User

Field Type: Checkbox

Field Label: Automation Exempt

Field Name: Automation_Exempt

Description: This user should be excluded from automation and validation rules

Make sure to add your new field to the User page layout.  Note: This checkbox can be checked temporarily on any user prior to running a data load. If you have a dedicated migration user, then you could leave it checked permanently.

2 – Create a “Do Nothing” Flow (you can do this even if you’ve never used Flow before!)

This step is an adaptation of Eric Smith’s work here.

Okay, I think this might seem complicated, but you can do it. (Note that this is a workaround. Do not use this as a template to make real flows. To make Process Builder do nothing, it needs to think that it is doing something. So, we are giving it something to do that won’t affect anything at all.)

 

If you don’t want to go into the flow designer at all, you can install this teeny tiny flow here to create the Do Nothing flow. It won’t break anything–it doesn’t actually do anything. As always, though, best practice is to install packages into a sandbox first (here’s the sandbox link). If you go the install route, your last step in this section will be to go to setup, search Flows, and activate your Do Nothing flow. Then you’ll be ready to jump to move to Step 3 below: Add a “Do Nothing” Step in Process Builder. 

Now, we’ll start by opening the flow designer. Search for Flows in Setup Quick Find, and click on it in the sidebar. Then click the New Flow button.

Tip: If you’ve run the flow builder before, you’ll get a blank flow. If not, you might get an error message saying to download Flash. Click that link and it’ll prompt you to enable Flash from the browser.

Watch the whole setup process here.

Once you see the blank flow designer, look for Assignment in the left sidebar and drag it onto the main panel. A window will pop up automatically.

Enter the name Do Nothing. The unique name will be filled automatically.

Click into the input for Variable and select Create New > Variable. Name the variable Empty and make sure that it has a Type of Text. Click OK.

You are back in the Assignment element. Select Equals as the operator, and start typing empty in the Value field. Click on $GlobalConstant. EmptyString when you see it. Click OK.


From the main panel, roll over your assignment element until you see a little green icon on it. Click that icon to set the element as your start element.


Click Save in the top left corner. Give your flow a name (such as “Do Nothing”) and add a description that will be meaningful to you (e.g., “A placeholder flow that does nothing”). You will get “Save successful” and then a yellow warning message. That is normal for this flow. Go ahead and click OK.


Click Close in the top left corner.

You’ll come to a page with one row. Click Activate. You’ve built a flow!


Now we’re ready to put it into practice with Process Builder.

3 – Add a “Do Nothing” Step in Process Builder

Before running your automation, check whether the user is Automation Exempt. To do that, clone your process and create a criteria node. It will start out at the bottom, but make sure you move it up before you activate the process. While your criteria can include any reason why you want to skip over automation, you must include that the user is tagged Automation Exempt. Use a formula. If you named your user field Automation Exempt, you will be able to copy this formula: $User.Automation_Exempt — otherwise, select System Variable > Current User > Automation Exempt.

That’s it. Process Builder will look to see if Automation Exempt is checked. You don’t even need to include an IF or ==TRUE.

Now, we will call our flow. In Immediate Actions, click New. Name the action Do Nothing, and select Flow. You will see your flow in the list. If you don’t, go back to your list of flows and make sure that Do Nothing is active.

Now, we have our completed criteria node and actions. Roll over that whole section until you see the drag and drop arrows on the right side of the screen.

Drag and drop the section up to the top of your process. If there’s automation you want to have happen even during imports, just drag and drop your new section accordingly.

Rinse and repeat for all of your processes!

4 – Import with Ease

When you’re ready to import, find the user who will be running the import (quite possibly yourself, but maybe your migration user or API-only user), and check the Automation Exempt checkbox on his or her user record. When you’re done importing, you can uncheck the box. That’s it! Now, go make some magic!

 

_____________________________________________

Allison Letts

Senior Consultant, Salesforce Services Group

Attain Partners

Allison is an experienced, certified Salesforce Consultant for nonprofits, specializing in automation, reporting, data management, and integrations. In addition, Allison has worked for nonprofit organizations to unleash the potential of Salesforce for fundraising, including email marketing, and now brings those best practices to Attain Partners’ nonprofit clients. 

The Journey to Attain Partners More in 2017

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At the start of 2017, just a few months post-acquisition, ACF Solutions’ journey to fully integrate into Attain Partners began with a focus on continuing to strengthen our relationships with and to add value to our clients; growing and investing in our incredible and talented team of Salesforce technologists; and ensuring we remained ever active in the Salesforce.org ecosystem, with an unwavering commitment to optimize our impact. 

Our year was guided by introducing the value of The Attain Partners Way into our methodology and operations, and progressively building a more robust offering of services and capabilities. We were excited to reach the culmination of our transformation as we announced our rebranding as Attain Partners’ Salesforce Services Group in September.  

It has undoubtedly been a year of learning and growth, and we have become a stronger team in the process, better able to serve our clients and proudly wave the Attain Partners banner. 

As 2017 comes to a close, I would like to thank all of our clients, partners, and team members for your partnership as we have gone through this transformation, and for your continued trust and engagement in creating continuing success. The infographic below represents some of our collective achievements in 2017, including our Salesforce Partner Innovation Award for our work with United Service Organizations (USO) and our 9.4 customer satisfaction rating.

We look forward to creating even greater impact for our valued clients in 2018, leveraging our unique best practice-infused approaches, deep industry knowledge, and forward-thinking strategic vision to drive enterprise-wide transformation in support of vital missions. 

2017 Year in Review Infographic

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