Empowering Donors Through Salesforce Innovation: The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida’s Donor Portal Journey

Hello, everyone! If you're just joining, we're gonna be kicking it off in just a minute. I want to give people some time to hop into the webinar here. Alrighty. We will go ahead and get it started. Hello, Happy Wednesday. Welcome to our webinar today. We're very excited to have a special guest joining us. From the Community Foundation for northeast Florida, who I will introduce in just a little bit. If you are looking for ways to boost donor engagement, you're in the right place today. Our webinar is titled empowering donors through salesforce innovation. The community foundation for northeast Florida's donor portal journey. Throughout this session you may hear myself or one of our panelists today refer to the community foundation as Tcf. Just to keep things a little bit more concise, so we will go ahead and get started. Now, as a major portion of this project, I would be doing red paths if I didn't take a moment to share who we are so. For over 15 years Redpath has been amplifying.

With more than 450 clients and 3,000 projects. Under our belts are 4, 9, 5, out of 5. Satisfaction rating speaks to the trust that we've built throughout our outcome, focus solutions. We have a Us based team that brings in 200 certifications. And over 200 years of combined experience, designing solutions tailored to. Each of our clients. Unique needs. Beyond this technical expertise. What really sets us apart is our passion for aligning with our clients missions. We really believe in true partnership and working hand in hand to help organizations like Tcf.

So I'd like to quickly take a moment to introduce the 2 experts who will be leading today's discussion. First, st we have Arian, one of our season. Salesforce consultants here at Redpath. Ari. Has been part of the salesforce ecosystem for over 6 years, and holds 5 certifications, bringing extensive. Joining us as well is Tyson, the Information Systems Manager at the the Community Foundation for northeast Florida. Tyson has been very instrumental in our collaborator efforts with Tcf providing invaluable insights that have helped shape our projects that we've worked on together. So with that I will turn it over to Tyson to give an overview of Tcf. And share more about their mission. Thanks. Caitlin. So at the community Foundation for northeast Florida we strive to connect people who care with causes that matter to them.

We engage in civic leadership, donor stewardship and philanthropic leadership. Helping individual donors achieve their philanthropic goals. Tcf. Serves the 6 counties of northeast Florida, highlighted in blue. On the right hand side of the slide. Which is centered around Jacksonville. And we assist the 5 County Swanny Valley area to the west. We are excited that 24 is our 60th anniversary.

And we currently are home to over 700 funds with 650 million dollars in assets. Last year alone we granted over 75 million dollars. So. Today we're gonna start off with talking a little bit about the challenges that the community foundation. We had a lot. We had a lot of challenges a couple of years ago when we really embarked on this project. We knew in 2022 that we had to make a change due to our limitations of our aging legacy software system.

Didn't reach the end of this life cycle. And the system, which I'm sure looks great on windows, 98, flexibility and customization making it difficult to adapt to the evolving needs of our donors. As our donor base began to skew younger and more tech savvy? They expected a modern donor portal with user, friendly features. Compounding the issues was our little confidence with our vendors, coupled with a high annual cost required to transition to their next generation. Project. These factors necessitated a revamp of our entire ecosystem, and develop a donor portal to better serve our funders and align with their expectations. We decided on salesforce because it offered a best in class software solution that was both and highly customizable.

It's software stack provided the functionality we needed along with the ability to integrate seamlessly with the financial software package we chose, which was saved. Stage impact. The extensive salesforce developer community also gave us the flexibility and support to customize and scale without a small group of closed source developers. This combination of features and resources made salesforce the ideal choice. To meet both our current and future needs. We chose Redpath as our implementation partner, after interviewing several other organ companies because. We needed a team.

With deep expertise the entire salesforce ecosystem. And 3rd party apps. Redpath provided a diverse group of professionals, including developers, salesforce Admins, accounts, and specialists inform staff for salesforce and document generation. As well as the community portal developers which we'll focus on today. They just, they demonstrated a collaborative approach, willing to engage with 3rd party, develop. Yeah. Willing to engage with 3rd party vendors.

And address our unique requirements with their strong general salesforce knowledge and specific expertise in areas like not for profits. Community portal email, marketing, integration and reporting and dashboards. We felt confident in their ability to meet our needs. Additionally, red pads of talent ensured that our projects, continuity, and knowledge, base. Would remain intact, and constantly moving forward. I already was our primary donor architect. She not only built out the features we wanted, but also designed it to resemble our digital corporate identity.

I will pass. To Ari to show some of the features she built in our donor portal. Alright. Thanks, Tyson. Good morning, everyone. So I'll talk through some of the features we added to the donor portal that was built on Salesforce. We leveraged many salesforce out of the box features as well as various 3rd party tools to Streamline Fund management for their users. Our goal was to create a more intuitive and efficient experience for fund holders by improving the accessibility of. Crucial information, simplifying processes and ensuring data security. 1st of all, managing a funds is absolutely essential for fund holders.

And we've designed the donor portal to make this as straightforward as possible. By using Salesforce's standard page layouts, we've ensured that the fund balance information is clear and easily accessible. The Fund Detail page provides a comprehensive overview. Displaying critical details, such as the fund, balance, name, number, category, and more. The use of the standard page layouts allows administrators. To effortlessly update what is displayed to their users, so that they can keep their information. And then to further enhance user experience, we integrated a tab section on the fun detail page that makes it easier for users to navigate through various categories of fund, related information.

This section includes tabs for grant and contribution. Offering fund holders easy access to their data. The private sharing model with custom. Automation ensures, users only view information pertinent to their specific role on the fund. Which maintains data security. Our approach. For these 2 lists of granting and contribution Salesforce's related lists to manage their data. This setup, similar to using the standard page layouts allows administrators to effortlessly update or adjust the columns as needed through salesforce setup. Ensuring that all of the information is relevant.

We also added the option for users to download their grant and contribution history as a Csv file. We provided a link to a filtered salesforce report that users can easily save their data to their computer for their personal records. And then here is an example of one of the contribution history reports, as viewed by the donor porter on the top. We applied a URL filtering to ensure that the report shows only the contributions related to the specific fund that the user was viewing when they clicked to the button. This is, especially useful for users who have access to multiple funds. From this page. Users can easily export their contribution by exporting the report as a Csv. File.

We also used report charts on their fun detail page to show at a glance views of their granting history. As you can see in this image we included 3 charts for granting history, including this year last year and last 3 years. They have the ability to click on any of these reports to view and download the Csv report behind the charts, as you can see in the image above it would look similar to that. And then we aimed to simplify the Grant recommendation process by integrating form stack for an intuitive user experience that integrates directly with salesforce. The user can access this pre filled form directly from their fund. Detail page. To enhance the user experience and ensure clean data. We've ensured the form auto fills wherever possible. So it takes in the fund that they came from the user. Who's filling it out. That way. They only see data. That is relevant to them. For example.

In this form when selecting the organization for the Grant recommendation. We filtered the options to show only the relevant accounts, so that users only see what they need. And it also limits the number of potential duplicate accounts to manage inside of salesforce. We also considered that many of Tcs often make similar grant recommendations with just a few details, changing each time. So to accommodate this we added a clone link on the granting history related list which allows users to clone. Previous grant recommendations, and then make any necessary adjustments before submitting. And then to streamline communication and reduce the volume of calls and emails to Tcs team. We focus on enhancing the way users can access, their fund statements and other related documentation.

To ensure accurate fund statements. We integrated form, stack documents. To streamline the process of generating fund statements within salesforce. Tyson will go over the build of fun statements in more detail in a little bit. But as far as the portals concerned, we set up a custom object for fun statements that looks up to the fund. Which allows users to view those statements as a related list in the portal. And then, by selecting a statement from that related list, users can then easily download it. As a Pdf. For their records.

And then. For other files and documents. We turned to salesforce. Which allows administrators to upload and share any other documents or resources with fund holders by adding those directly to the files on the fund. And then to make it easier for users to find the files they need. We incur a 3rd party tool called Enhanced files list. This allows us to organize those files into intuitive categories, making document retrieval, quick and straightforward. Those improvements help to ensure a smoother, more efficient experience for the users, by providing them with easy access to all of their necessary.

And then to display investment options and earnings to donor users. We used a 3rd party tool called Cmd. Enhanced related list. This allows us to display filtered lists in the portal. This tool helped us to show a specific subset of Ge badge records focusing. Only excuse me only on earnings. By using this tool we were able to filter and display just the relevant earnings data, making it easier for users to find find and view the information that they need. I. So in summary, we leveraged a variety of out of the box features to streamline the ongoing management of the site. And then, by integrating various 3rd party tools and implementing some custom coded solutions, we enhanced functionality and streamlined their processes. This approach not only made it easier for end users to access and manage their information, but also improves the efficiency and ease of use for administrators.

And I'll hand it back to Tyson to talk through some of the more internal build items. Thanks! Ari. So building the donor portal, and all these features took a lot of planning by the Tcf. And build out by Redpath. During our planning stage we reimagined what our internal processes and workflows could be for managing funds and grants. We began by thoroughly rethinking how we receive gifts and manage Grant, making. Historically, I grant, making process was highly manual, involving paper based approvals that were passed from office to office.

Which is time consuming and inefficient. We aim to streamline this by shifting to an electronic approval system, allowing grant recommendations and approvals to move more swiftly and seamlessly throughout the organization. This transformation involved automating various stages of the grant, making process and creating clear workflows that supported our mission. To better manage donor relationships. Red Tap added custom objects to make connections between contacts and funds. Creating new roles that define access levels within the donor portal. Specifically, we developed 3 general accounting unit roles.

Full access, read only, and view and no access. These roles helped us clearly delineate what information and actions donors could perform within their respective funds. As a critical part of our new work flows. Was a critical part of our new workflows, was building a sync integration between salesforce and our financial software. This find bidirectional integration allowed us to sync, find balances, grant payments, and gifts received across the 2 systems. Ensuring accurate and up to date financial information.

With this integration Staff could view data within salesforce without needing to manually transfer financial information between platforms. Significantly reducing errors and administrative workload. And with the data available in salesforce. That meant it could also be available on the donor. Portland. We build internal tools, such as lists, reports, and dashboards, to effectively manage. Incoming Grant recommendations submitted through the Dora Portal. These reports allowed Staff to track grants through various stages of the approval process, ensuring that no recommendation was overlooked.

And by subscribing keystaff to these reports and dashboards, we provided them with timely information directly in their inbox, allowing for efficient decision making and grant management and preventing stale data. The 2 most important pieces of our project was the donor portal and developing an automated process for creating fund statements in salesforce. The donor portal provides real time information about the fund. Well, a fund statement provides quarterly and annual snapshots of the fund. The complex workflow for statements involves requesting data from the financial software receiving roll-up data. But the current quarter and year, and merging it with salesforce data to generate a detailed statement. Through our document generation, tool.

These statements are then reviewed, printed, and mailed, and shared directly on the donor portal for electronic access. Statements can be processed individually or in bulk. Which streamlined what had once been a labor intensive task, that required a single person on staff to produce all the statements. And transformed into a team effort that spreads the work across the department. So one of our results been. Well, Tcf. Transitioned to Salesforce in May of 2023, and a month later launched our new donor Portal.

And the 15 months we've seen tremendous growth and usage of our donor portal. We are seeing an increase in all areas of the portal, including 32% more portal users. And 300% increase in the average monthly portal logins. So while we've almost. And if we are increased by a 3, rd we're seeing users log in 3 times more often than they were before. Online giving is up over 20%. And the 55% increase in online grant.

In addition, since moving to salesforce account engagement, we've increased our email audience and our email open rates. As a staff. We are working more efficiently. We have decentralized reporting. So it's not all run through a single reporting expert. Our staff is empowered to create their own reports, which is saving several hours a month in meetings about reporting needs. Our fun statement, creation, 75% less time. And we are able to make adjustments to the statement, format and queries much easier. With the reporting tools plus tasks and email tracking in salesforce.

Our relationship. Managers spend 1 8 time. Prep, and managing. Her fund holder as they were in our old system. They're able to find the data all in one place. Tcf. Is able to provide an enhanced donor experience because of our donor portal. Portal provides, commonly asked questions and details about their fund, without having to call or email.

And because of this information, when our relationship managers meet with our donors for their annual philanthropic review. They can spend their time talking about philanthropic goals rather than going over financial and reporting details. Our staff is able to manage the data easier which ensures the data is accurate, and prevents any reputational concerns. And when there is an issue or question from a portal user, we can log in as that user and see exactly what they're seeing, without any complicated maneuvering. Finally, we have our operational savings. We save over 15 HA month on grant processing, which is enabling us to handle a larger volume of Grant recommendations without additional staffing.

As you saw with our increase, 55% increase in online. That puts the data straight into our system rather than us manually entering it. This ensures proper. And with Salesforce's automations. It ensures our staff, only perform their tasks within their role. Which ensures proper approvals occur, and reduces errors that could take hours to resolve.

The beauty of salesforce is that it's always growing and morphing with us. But the consulting team like Redpath, we are able to build out our ever changing once and. I'll have Ari speak to a few of our future enhancements. Now. Alright. So yeah, even with those amazing results. Looking ahead, we're excited to continue evolving the donor portal to better serve fund holders and enhance their experience even more. So while we've made significant strides in improving functionality and streamlining processes, we recognize there's always room for growth. So in this section we'll outline some of the key enhancements we're planning to implement in the future.

1st is that we hope to increase our grant processing. Communications. Currently the system automates a confirmation email upon grant request, submission, and then a letter. When the grant is approved. Moving forward. We aim to improve communication throughout the entire Grant life cycle. So we plan to implement additional email automation that will notify users of key status updates as their grant progresses. This enhancement will ensure that users stay informed and engaged at every stage of the granting process, providing a more transparent and streamlined experience. Then, next, we'd like to improve the users around a accessing their historical funding information. Currently searching through historical grant data can be a bit cumbersome due to some of the limitations around related lists. So to enhance this experience. We plan to implement advanced search capabilities that will allow users to locate and review their granting history.

This upgrade will make it significantly easier to find specific grants among potentially hundreds of past entries. Which will provide a more intuitive and user friendly way to access historical funding information. We'd also like to give funders the ability to create and clone multiple grants at once. Currently users can create and clone grants one at a time. Which can be a bit time consuming when dealing with multiple, similar, or even sometimes identical grants. So to streamline the process, we plan to introduce functionality that allows users to create and clone multiple grants in bulk.

This enhancement will significantly reduce the number of clicks required by the end user and improve efficiency for users managing numerous grants simultaneously. I'm sorry, and so our donor portal is already talked about, has some great reporting tools already, and they're really powerful. A few donors have discovered them and started using them, but the vast majority don't even know they exist. So one of our enhancements really is training and giving some nudges to our donors to look at these reporting tools and see how fund holders can use them to leverage that information that they're looking for. We are always looking to. For additional ways to increase our return on investment. The more automations we can build to streamline the processes, the less time we need to manually workflows to see where we can make adjustments and make things more efficient. We are providing more access to data on the donor than was previously locked up in our financial software.

Or it was only available to staff which empowers our funders to better understand their fund. In addition to our annual philanthropic reviews. Take a fair amount of time. I've worked prior to the meeting, and we are on the verge of automating nearly all of the key data points and reports so that it will just be a click of a button, and they have the information they need. And we look forward to using grantmaking history reports to guide future granting opportunities for our funders as well as our program staff. That doesn't mean always recommending the same organizations, but to help them find new to them organizations that match their grant making patterns to achieve their philanthropic goals.

But from the onset we've talked a lot about how we wanted to grow with our system. And with Salesforce and Redpath. We've been making big changes to reflect new ventures and priorities in our organization. Some of the things that we. Couldn't even imagine a year ago. We're already now implementing, as we work in the system to build our needs and our wants. And as we hear back from our funders. We're excited about the pipeline of new features, and working with a partner like Red Path, makes it possible. Thank you so much. Ari and Tyson. That was a lot of really great information. I do have a few questions.

From some of our audience today. So 1st wants to know, can you only see one fund at a time in the portal? Or if an org or someone has multiple funds. Can you see them all together? If so, do they roll up. Yeah. So we made it so that. If somebody has multiple funds, they they are able to click and see a list of funds. And I believe we also added a feature, where, if they only have one fund rather than needing to go. To see all of them. It just goes directly to the single fund that they have. And that's kind of in line with why, we used fund roles on the fund to determine and access, because somebody might have.

Full access on one fund, where they can make grants and see all of the things, and then on another. Fund. They might just have view access. And as far as rolling up they. Will. So the when they go to the Fun detail page, they'll just see that one funds information. But when they go to the reporting tools they actually see all the funds they have access to. So those reporting tools can be really helpful. We have a few fund holders that have several funds, and they like to see things. Clump together in those reports, have allowed them to really pull that information and see.

Data together versus just. Phone, by phone. Great. Thank you guys, we also have a question from Priscilla. She's asking if you can explain the relationship between the donor portal and the increase in email open rates. Will you say that again? I'm sorry I was reading the other question from Lindsey. That's okay. No problem, she said. Can you explain the relationship between the donor portal and the increase in email open rates? There's.

We don't know. I don't know of a relationship between those 2. To be honest, what we have found, though, is people were signing up more and. I think that's more of a product of the account engagement product. That has just really increased better emailing tools and templates and getting information to the right people. So the donor portal hasn't necessarily led to more of that. I think we've seen more signups because of that. But. We are just have better tools to actually get information from people and collecting email addresses and getting them to sign up for what they want. And I think, being able to segment what they want versus what they.

Just getting all of our emails helps those open rates increase. Great and last question, and to the audience, too, if you guys are thinking of questions, feel free to put them in the chat, or the QA. Asked, have you included the personalized fund giving link in the portal so that daf donors can give. Via the portal to their daf. Yeah, so. On the portal. They can click, contribute, or give. I don't remember the exact wording of it, but it does take them straight to. A contribution page for their death.

And that. Auto fills that information for them, and they don't need to worry about it. In addition, we've actually created a. Salesforce field on the fund record internally that. Gives a direct. Give to that fund link which has been incredibly helpful, for when we have memorial funds. And there's a lot of people wanting to give to a particular one before we were creating a new page, and we had to get all that set up, and then make sure it was posted in the right places, and send that out to the right.

People. And now anyone on staff can just. Click that link. They get the fund. Give to link it. Auto fills the fund. And then they email that out. So. We see a lot more with the memorials being helpful. But certainly if anyone wants to give on their when they're logged in the portal. It auto puts all that information in for them, as well. Very cool. Alright, I don't see any more questions coming in. So again, a big thank you to Tyson and Ari for providing this information, and thank you to everyone who took time out of their day to come. Listen to the webinar. I will be sending out a recording later this week.

So that you can have access to this information again and kind of replay and look through it. So I hope everyone has a great rest of your day. Thanks again for joining.