Salesforce CRM Makes Donor Management More Effective at Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties

Challenge

• Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties, an autonomous not-for-profit social enterprise dedicated to creating solutions to poverty through workforce creation, social action, and environmental stewardship, needed a new CRM system.
• The organization, which manages 17 retail stores, a growing online store, and an extensive re-use/recycling operation, wanted a better way to capture information on donors, shoppers, and program participants.
• Goodwill was using E-Tapestry and Raiser’s Edge fundraising solutions, but wanted a single relational database to support its cross-selling and marketing efforts.
• The organization also wanted to develop a complete business intelligence system over time.
• Goodwill of San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin Counties also sought to create a custom solution template other Goodwill affiliate organizations could use.

Solution

• With assistance from Salesforce.com Consulting, Goodwill deployed Salesforce CRM in a couple of months to 150 employees throughout the organization. Salesforce.com Training & Certification programs got users up to speed quickly. Internal training programs showed users the Goodwill-specific features.
• Salesforce CRM Sales provides a central location for donor and customer information, making it easier for Goodwill to cross-sell to customers, material and financial donors, and plan corporate donation drives.
• Salesforce CRM also tracks information needed for IRS reporting.
• Custom integration between Goodwill’s Web site and Salesforce CRM enables the automatic creation of new accounts, contacts, and opportunities, and generates response emails, case assignments, and escalations as needed. Receipts--including a personal note from the data entry interns who are learning how to use Salesforce CRM as part of their job training experience--are automatically sent to donors via email. 
• Goodwill creates and manages campaigns targeting financial and material donors using Salesforce CRM Marketing. The organization installed VerticalResponse from the  AppExchange marketplace for added email and direct mail campaign support. 
• PostCode Anywhere from AppExchange improves data quality by providing address validation and automatic capture at time of entry.
• Future plans include building fundraising dashboards and creating custom online training programs to increase adoption. Goodwill is working with salesforce.com partner Astadia and the Family Service Agency of San Francisco to expand its use of Salesforce CRM to monitor program outcomes and institutional fundraising initiatives.

Results

• Goodwill of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties increased the number of donors in its database from 2,000 to 80,353 mailable accounts and more than 40,000 emailable accounts.
• The organization has improved information sharing and integration among disparate departments for more coordinated efforts.
• Targeted emails have increased the frequency of donations; donors are responding to requests for specific items as well as other requests for engagement.
• Program participants trained in data entry and reporting using Salesforce CRM have experienced improved placement rates for employment at other nonprofits.