Redpath kicks off the year with their Pro Bono Salesforce Consulting Grant

To kick off our year, Redpath hosted our all-company Winter Dreamin’ event. This virtual event was designed to bring our team together so we can learn, grow, focus on teamwork, and give back to our community.

Leading up to Winter Dreamin’, Redpath opened up applications for nonprofits and small businesses to apply to receive 20-25 complimentary hours of work to complete a business project or training through Redpath’s Pro Bono Salesforce Consulting Grant. A total of 152 volunteer hours were completed January 11-13 during the Winter Dreamin’ event.

Out of 30 applicants, 6 organizations were selected. Let’s take a look at who these organizations are and the work they received through this grant:

180 Degrees

Their mission:

Create safe spaces and services that honor each individual’s healing journey.

The problem (grant request):

180 Degrees had two main problems they wanted to solve with their grant request: First was to set up meaningful dashboards with essential reporting tools so that they can accurately report revenue, and report on fundamentals of the business. Second was to solve the mystery of how to save time by batching gift entries and automate email acknowledgements.

Current pain points:

The 180 Degrees team loves Salesforce, but due to staff turnover in their Advancement Department, new hires without Salesforce experience continue to—by their own admission— “fumble around” due to lack of basic system knowledge. The organization has made great strides in managing grants and are raising more money than ever, but that means more time spent managing fundraising relationships and less bandwidth to dedicate the time, energy, and focus they need to learn and progress with Salesforce.

The solution:

To solve the first request on the list, Redpath created a Revenue Dashboard that includes 8 reports and dashboard components that give 180 degrees both a high level and detailed view of their revenue sources and trends so that they can trust the data they are viewing and make data driven decisions regarding their fundraising activities. The Revenue Dashboard is broken down by contracts, grants and donations with events being an option to add on once they are tracked in Salesforce.

The team also started to enable batch gift entry and automated email acknowledgements to streamline their manual processes and allow them to focus their time on more high impact activities. The team will continue to work on the gift entry and acknowledgement build in continued support work

World Savvy

Their mission:

World Savvy educates and engages youth to learn, work, and thrive as responsible global citizens.

The problem (grant request):

World Savvy’s grant request was for assistance improving upon their current Salesforce integrations, and exploring additional integrations the organization hasn’t had the capacity to set up thus far. Some examples given were integrating with their fundraising platform, Funraise, and running contact lists to find updated addresses.

Current pain points:

For World Savvy, assessing and implementing new and existing integrations would greatly improve their efficiency, data quality, and processing, helping to improve the overall flow and order of the development team. They know of additional integrations that would help streamline their processes, but the team hasn’t had the time or capacity to get them up and running. This grant would also alleviate some obligations from their Development Associate, allowing them to focus their time and energy on new and existing projects and tasks.

The solution:

During our time together our team was able to create new lead/contact duplicate rules as well as provide World Savvy with a comparison list of address verification tools.

Big Brother, Big Sisters – Independence Region

Their mission:

Big Brothers Big Sisters Independence is a donor-supported organization that enriches, encourages and empowers children to reach their highest potential through safe, one-to-one mentoring relationships.

The problem (grant request):

Big Brothers Big Sisters requested assistance with converting process automation and workflow rules over to Salesforce Flow, as well as getting additional training on using Flow in general moving forward.

Current pain points:

Big Brothers Big Sisters found that the automations provided by Workflow Rules and Process Builder saved hours of time for their staff every week. Converting those existing processes over to Salesforce Flow and receiving training on how to build flows for the future would free their advancement team to continue building relationships with community partners and ensuring sustainability. In addition, fixing existing errors within Flow would allow them to meet additional goals, like automating donor follow-ups and assigning contacts to journeys.

The solution:

An existing issue with scheduling jobs due to permission errors with the running user was fixed by setting up the appropriate user ID to eliminate any future errors. In addition, the previous state had process builders that were identified as needing to be rewritten and deployed as flows to run more efficiently. Additionally, a flow was created to perform only one update to Salesforce instead of needing multiple updates on each contact record.

To conclude the work being done, Redpath created best practices and thought processes while building the flows, created a Flows 101 deck that included an Issue Log, and shared a recording of a training session for future reference and trainings. Some additional demonstrations were included such as how to build a change set and validate and deploy it to a production environment and how to build lightning email templates to automatically send from a flow build on an Engagement Plan Task, which was previously a manual task for the Big Brothers Big Sisters support team.

Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation

Their mission:

Improve the cardiovascular health of individuals and communities through innovative research and education.

The problem (grant request):

Minneapolis Heart Institute requested help with data loading, updating profiles, and reporting, so that they could better prepare to launch their new Salesforce App for research studies.

Current pain points:

Developing a Salesforce App would bring the Minneapolis Heart Institute research team into Salesforce, allowing them to track which medical device/pharmaceutical companies with which they have studies and capture data on those studies directly into Salesforce with a 360-degree view of their industry partnerships.

The solution:

To ensure data accuracy and a high quality user experience, Minneapolis Heart Institute needed 8 new custom profiles and 2 permission sets to support the many teams that would be sharing a new custom object. In addition, they needed assistance cleansing the historic data that would be populated into the custom object from another database.

The Redpath team was able to accomplish both these requests in enough time to also assist in creating 12 new reports based on varying filter requirements. While data management and user permissions are not the most glamorous tasks, the team was excited to enable Minneapolis Hearth Institute’s mission to deliver accurate and important information to the right users at the right time!

Southwest Initiative Foundation

Their mission:

Southwest Initiative Foundation’s mission of connecting people, investing in ideas and building communities is put into practice every day to work towards a southwest Minnesota where all people thrive.

The problem (grant request):

After recently completing a Path to Success with Redpath, Southwest Initiative Foundation asked to use our time to assist with Invoice/Expense Creation, Locking, and Approval—one of the pain points identified in the sessions, and one that would positively impact the entire organization if relieved.

Current pain points:

Southwest Initiative Foundation noticed that in every Path to Success session, one pain point was brought up over and over: Invoice/Expension Creation, Locking, and Approval. The organization identified several problems with invoice/expense creation, including inefficient cloning areas, integration errors, and regular users finding themselves locked out of crucial functions. While many workarounds have been brainstormed, fixing these processes for good would save a tremendous amount of time for their staff and money for the organization.

The solution:

We chose to focus on creating a more reliable, accurate, and streamlined Invoice/Expense clone and creation process using Salesforce Flow. The solution we created provided a guided experience for SWIF’s users to clone existing invoices, optionally clone the related expense line items, and populate these new records with the data they need for their relevant approval processes.

We hope this solution provides SWIF with the ability to spend more time on their mission by achieving the following:

• Users spend less time creating, editing, and submitting Invoices/Expenses
• Budget owners have greater confidence in data quality and spend less time reviewing Invoices/Expenses for error
• Operational Users spend less time assisting users with frustrating process issues
• Salesforce adoption and enthusiasm increases due to the quality-of-life improvements

Prosperity Now

Their mission:

Prosperity Now’s mission is to drive economic opportunity for all and build equitable economic power. The organization creates impactful systemic change by centering those who have been historically excluded, amplifying community-rooted solutions, and energizing them through research, advocacy, policy, and narrative change. Prosperity Now envisions an economy that is just, fair, and free from structural racism. One where every person, family, and community has the power to build sustainable wealth and prosperity.

The problem (grant request):

Prosperity Now sought Redpath’s help to benefit the organization in multiple departments by using Salesforce more effectively:

• The Program teams would be able to more efficiently and effectively engage with individuals to become partners and advocates for their work; 
• The Communications team would be able to grow the constituent base of individuals interested in Prosperity Now’s mission working for racial and ethnic economic justice;  
• The Individual Giving team would be able to help engaged individuals become donors and create pathways to deepen their relationship with the organization; and 
• The Institutional Investment team would be better able to build on relationships with corporate and foundation funders. 

Ultimately, Prosperity Now felt that Redpath’s assistance would help them move closer to building a movement for racial and economic justice in the U.S.

Current pain points:

Prosperity Now understands the fundamental importance of well-organized contact data to a nonprofit’s fundraising success. The instance that was feeding contact data into Prosperity Now’s contact list was no longer working effectively for their current fundraising efforts. The Prosperity Now team hoped to use Redpath’s assistance to assess whether their current contact organization structure is still relevant (and to create a new structure if needed), learn how to better track various types of contacts, and to restructure reports for more accurate and efficient use of their Salesforce data.

The solution:

Prosperity Now knows they are ready to take the next steps with their Salesforce org, but wanted some help figuring out what that should look like. Their volunteer team took a “divide and conquer” approach to provide them with a starter list of next step recommendations for their org.

In order to learn the business needs, our team spent 2 hours on calls with representatives from different departments documenting all of the discovery work. During the volunteer time, the team installed some free tools that help with organization analysis and problem-spotting, then provided the client with detailed notes on what was found. The team also took a self-guided tour of their data and metadata and captured recommendations about data problems and best practices that could improve their system.

In sum, the team compiled a list of 113 recommendations for Prosperity Now, which they can use to set their priorities and objectives as they plan their next phase of Salesforce development.

As a company, Redpath takes pride in giving back to the community and loves to see the great work that was accomplished in such a short amount of time. Our employees collaborated together and learned things about the client that normally takes weeks or months to do all in a matter of days. We cannot express how grateful we are to have such wonderful employees willing to volunteer their time and such wonderful clients to partner with.

“Thank you so much! This is great documentation and we are so appreciative! Great to know there is a good partner around in case we need one in the future.”

– Minneapolis Heart Institute Data Architect Leah Coveney