Successful Oracle Integration Gives Schwab Charitable 100% Visibility into the Full Lifecycle of its Donor Program

"The success of our Salesforce deployment hinged on our ability to fully customize the solution to fit our nonprofit business model. That in turn would be the key to user adoption and data integrity. The next step was to integrate Salesforce with our existing Oracle donor database. We're thrilled to report that we achieved those goals and can now manage the entire lifecycle of our donor process from one unified system. With this streamlined solution in place, I only see great things for our program going forward."


Challenge
  • Schwab Charitable, a public charity established to increase giving in the United States, needed a tool to help its service and development teams better manage prospective donors, their advisors, and close the loop with those that became current donors
  • The nonprofit had no CRM system in place, and little budget
  • Once a prospective donor converted to an active account, it was impossible to see any prospect history for that individual
  • Because the sales team travels extensively, the chosen CRM solution had to be accessible from any place at any time

Solution
  • After conducting a live demo, the non-profit selected Salesforce for its customizability, on-demand licensing structure, and Web-based platform; it initially implemented Salesforce Group Edition, then subsequently upgraded to Salesforce Enterprise Edition for its integration capabilities
  • Integration with its Oracle database provides service and sales staff with access to the account at each point in the lifecycle—all from one place; batch synchronizations are done twice daily
  • Salesforce illuminates donors' data, enabling users to run reports off transactional balances
  • Built-in alerts inform the director when anyone enters an opportunity in excess of $1 million
  • By downloading Vettro RainMaker from the AppExchange directory, sales staff can create, access, update, and act upon information directly from their wireless RIM BlackBerries
  • Customized screen details and tab names align Salesforce with Schwab Charitable's business functions
  • Future plans to incorporate escalations into custom fields created for compliments and complaints will further weave customer service into the system
  • A knowledgebase built into Salesforce provides internal users with helpful solutions for serving their existing donors, advisors, and prospects quickly

Results
  • Access to the full lifecycle of the donor process gives Schwab Charitable a clearer picture of what it takes to attract and retain donors
  • Schwab Charitable's service team can now manage the donor process from one place, creating a more streamlined, efficient system
  • Visibility into donors' transactional data and robust pipeline information allows Schwab Charitable to run reports for accurate forecasting and planning
  • Wireless access to Salesforce equip the sales team with the agility of anytime, anywhere access
 
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