CMRI’s existing fundraising platform was more than 10 years old. Built on technology originally intended as an ERP system, it offered limited functionality for the fundraising team, hampered the Fundraising teams use of the application. A lack of data analytics and insights impeded the team’s ability to identify and manage different relationships with donors.
Over time, the team had built numerous add-ons or developed convoluted manual processes to handle even simple fundraising and donor-management tasks. For example, monthly regular-giving processes were managed manually, and credit card donations needed to be double-entered into two separate systems. The Fundraising and Supporter Services teams worked increasingly hard to ensure that donors weren’t directly disadvantaged or inconvenienced, but they were acutely aware that these time-consuming processes were absorbing resources that could be directed towards creating a truly outstanding donor experience.
The team identified that the best in class CRM, Salesforce, would deliver the flexibility to integrate with their website, support all aspects of Institute donor/supporter management, offer end user flexibility and functionality and deliver native integration options with peer to peer platforms.
“AlphaSys didn’t just come in and say ‘this is the way we’ve done it with other clients.’ They were open-minded and thought outside the box about how to get things to work for the Institute’s objectives. They understood the industry we are in and what we were trying to achieve.”
- Gaelen Fembock, Senior Business Analyst, CMRI