The Situation
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Nonprofits often face the challenge of doing more with less, limited staff, tight budgets, and increasing demands.
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One of our clients, a mid-sized nonprofit in education and community development, was no exception.
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They managed:
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Over 20,000 donor records
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A growing list of grant programs and outreach campaigns
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Their Salesforce system had become difficult to maintain, creating more work than it solved.
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Key issues included:
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Spending 12+ hours a week on manual data cleanup
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Constantly updating donor statuses by hand
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Manually assembling reports for leadership
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Each new campaign added more complexity and stress to the team’s already full plate.
The Challenge
While they had Salesforce in place, it wasn’t optimized for scale or accuracy. The biggest issues included:
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Duplicate and outdated donor records making segmentation nearly impossible
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Manual data entry for campaign updates and donation statuses
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Inconsistent grant tracking, leading to reporting delays
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No clear data ownership, which led to a growing backlog of unresolved issues
The impact? Wasted staff time, missed donor touchpoints, and reduced confidence in their data. Leadership couldn’t get reliable reports without hours of cleanup.
Our Approach: Fast, Focused, and Native to Salesforce
We started with a two-week discovery and audit, mapping out data pain points and current workflows. From there, we designed a lightweight cleanup and automation sprint using only Salesforce’s native tools—no third-party apps, no reimplementation.
Here’s what we rolled out:
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Automated duplicate detection and merging using Matching Rules and Duplicate Jobs
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Scheduled batch jobs to clean outdated records and standardize fields (e.g., donor type, grant stage)
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Process Builder and Flow to automate updates on donor and grant statuses based on defined triggers
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Custom reports and dashboards highlighting stale data, missing values, and overdue actions
We also trained their team on basic data hygiene best practices—so improvements would stick.
The Outcome: From Data Drains to Donor Focus
In just a few weeks, the team reclaimed over 12 hours of manual effort each week. More importantly, the system started working for them, not against them.
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Donor records were 98% clean and deduplicated
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Grant workflows became automatic and consistent
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Reporting became self-service for leadership
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No additional headcount or tools required
Why It Matters
For nonprofits, time is a limited resource—and every hour saved on operations is an hour that can go toward mission-driven work. With just a focused cleanup and the right automation, this team turned Salesforce from a chore into a strategic asset.
Thinking about streamlining your own Salesforce org?
Let’s talk through what’s possible—even with the setup you already have.
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