Redpath Renews Its Commitment to the Community: Second Consecutive Year of Pro Bono Salesforce Support Grant

For the second year in a row, Redpath invited applications from nonprofits and small businesses seeking complimentary hours of dedicated work for a business project or training. This initiative, known as Redpath’s Pro Bono Salesforce Support Grant, aimed to extend our support to organizations striving to make a positive impact. 

During the 2024 Winter Dreamin’ event, held January 17 and 18, a remarkable total of 156 volunteer hours were dedicated to these pro bono projects, underscoring our commitment to giving back. 

From a pool of 16 applicants, we carefully selected 5 organizations, each with unique goals and challenges. 

Join us in exploring the impactful work these organizations received through our Pro Bono Salesforce Support Grant.

American Craft Council

Their mission:

The American Craft Council fosters livelihoods and ways of living grounded in the artful work of the human hand, creating a more joyful, humane, and regenerative world.

The request:

American Craft Council requested assistance with streamlining their process automation by converting Process Builders to Flows due to the impending retirement of Process Builder. In addition, they were looking to receive guidance on effectively reporting on email engagement through Pardot, aiming to provide clearer insights into the success of email campaigns in terms of prospect conversion, event registration, and overall engagement.

The project:

Redpath collaborated with American Craft Council and primarily focused on converting process builders to flows as requested by their Salesforce Admin. In addition to the migration, Redpath also provided training resources for their Admin and addressed specific questions related to Pardot.

The team successfully migrated nine out of the ten process builders, leaving one for the Admin to practice, considering their automation experience. The migration involved cleaning up and adhering to flow best practices, including separating into before versus after save process builders, adding entry criteria, and removing hard-coded IDs, as well as emphasizing a more thematic and understandable approach. The team also identified active workflow rules that will also need to be migrated to flows in the future, keeping in mind the upcoming deprecation of workflow rules.

To support their Admin’s learning process, Redpath created a new Flow 101 document as a resource for future learning. Recognizing the team’s limited Pardot expertise, Redpath enlisted the help of one of our in-house Pardot experts to address specific Pardot questions and share valuable resources with the American Craft Council team.

Ultimately, Redpath successfully fulfilled the project’s objectives, empowering their Salesforce Admin with the knowledge and resources needed for ongoing flow management and Pardot-related tasks.

Big Brothers Big Sisters Independence Region

Their mission:

To ignite the power and promise of youth and close the mentoring gap, by creating and supporting one-to-one mentoring relationships and strengthening the quality of the mentoring field.

The request:

Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) Independence Region requested a revamp of their prospect rating system utilizing data from Salesforce, Wealth Engine, and Campaign Monitor email results. This initiative is crucial for BBBS Independence as they embark on a capital campaign, requiring a streamlined approach to identify top prospects based on various criteria.

The project: 

Redpath collaborated with Big Brothers Big Sisters Independence Region to address the issues with their existing prospect rating system. This system, established more than five years ago, incorporated various data such as Wealth Engine wealth screening data, Campaign Monitor data, and Salesforce giving data – but it wasn’t working!

The scoring system, named “ABC,” is based on three aspects reflecting the prospect’s potential value: Access, Belief, and Capacity. Access evaluates the organization’s access to the prospect, Belief measures the prospect’s alignment with the mission, and Capacity relies on Wealth Engine data.

Redpath dove into identifying and rectifying issues in the system. They fixed gaps in the system, such as scores that did not account for giving through Donor Advised Funds and family foundations. They also fixed broken components, such as the old version of DLRS that had ceased to run because it was so out of date. Redpath fixed and updated formula fields, created new fields, and built new DLRS Roll-Ups.

The team’s efforts resulted in 19 new fields, many corrected and updated fields, seven new DLRS rollups, and improved data quality. Redpath’s NPSP Data Quality Dashboard app was installed to provide visibility into data issues and encourage better data practices.

Redpath’s work aimed to empower Big Brothers Big Sisters Independence Region’s advancement team with a reliable and accurate prospect rating system. The enhanced system will assist in identifying additional prospect research needs and allow for informed decisions regarding prospect qualification. Redpath also recommended exploring Salesforce’s AI Prediction Builder for predictive analysis based on the refined data.

During the volunteer time, Redpath successfully addressed the challenges within the prospect rating system, offering a comprehensive solution and setting the stage for future improvements and predictive analytics.

Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities

Their mission:

Create and support mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth.

The request:

Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities applied seeking assistance in converting multiple intricate process builder processes to Flows. Depending on the time commitment required, they were also open to exploring additional training, particularly on creating record-triggered flows and other Salesforce flows/automation topics.

The project:

Redpath recently completed a project for Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities, focusing on converting complex process builders into flows. The Redpath team undertook the mission to simplify and enhance their processes. Despite the seemingly small task list of three process builders, one of them proved highly intricate, containing 50 nodes with various activities, including email sends, scheduled outcomes, and updates to multiple objects.

The Redpath team worked diligently to break down the complicated process builder into 18 new flows. They meticulously documented each node’s entry criteria, grouping similar ones together for efficiency. The team also eliminated hard coded references in favor of field api names to simplify sandbox to production moves and to streamline and improve the overall process for Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities.

In addition, Redpath explored the use of Salesforce’s Process Builder to Flow conversion tool. While the tool proved useful for non-scheduled paths, challenges arose with scheduled paths in process builders. The team manually addressed these challenges, ensuring the accuracy of the converted flows. They also discussed the tool’s naming conventions and some limitations, emphasizing the importance of reviewing the newly generated Flow for entry criteria accuracy and overall Flow best practices.

The Redpath team successfully accomplished the task, and the new flows are now in a development sandbox for testing by the Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities team. Despite the complexity of the original process builder, Redpath provided a jump start for testing, allowing the client to move forward with confidence.

The collaborative effort showcased Redpath’s expertise in tackling complex Salesforce implementations, providing effective solutions, and supporting organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities in optimizing their Salesforce processes.

Colorado College

Their mission:

At Colorado College their goal is to provide the finest liberal arts education in the country. Drawing upon the adventurous spirit of the Rocky Mountain West, they challenge students, one course at a time, to develop those habits of intellect and imagination that will prepare them for learning and leadership throughout their lives.

The request:

Colorado College is a new Salesforce client who has not yet experienced a release rollout. Due to their small team size, they requested guidance in this process that would be highly beneficial for both the team and the organization.

The project:

Redpath recently completed a project for Colorado College’s Advancement team, which began using Salesforce in May 2023, utilizing Affinaquest for fundraising management. The team at Colorado College felt overwhelmed with administrative tasks related to managing the regular Salesforce releases, understanding sandboxes, and deploying changes. Seeking advice on streamlining and optimizing these processes, Redpath created various tools and resources tailored to the specific needs of Colorado College.

Redpath provided insights into Salesforce releases, developing a strategy management document that offered suggestions for creating a plan, understanding release updates, and efficiently managing the process. The document included recommendations for reviewing articles, utilizing resources from Salesforce Ben and other community groups, and creating release guides. The aim was to simplify the management process and help prioritize the new Salesforce updates for Colorado College.

Redpath collaborated to guide Colorado College on managing Salesforce refreshes, offering recommendations on when and why refreshing is crucial. They provided a checklist template to track refresh tasks and introduced an issues log for documenting and learning from challenges. The team emphasized the importance of listing integrations by environment to ensure post-refresh connectivity.

In the area of sandbox management, Redpath explained the types of sandboxes and their usage, particularly emphasizing their roles in testing, training, and development. The team highlighted the importance of managing sandboxes effectively to enhance overall new internal developments and managing Salesforce updates with efficiency.

Addressing deployment processes, Redpath provided solutions to frustrations with change sets and suggested alternative tools. They outlined development processes, including best practices for working in production, a recommended sandbox development process, and an example using version control. The team provided insights into various tools, demos, and pricing models to assist Colorado College in choosing the most suitable options.

Recognizing Colorado College’s individual circumstances, Redpath provided flexibility in selecting the most appropriate strategies, considering Colorado College’s resources and priorities. Our goal was to furnish Colorado College with a tailored suite of tools and resources addressing their specific requirements.

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!