The Challenge: Data Disarray 

A Boston-based nonprofit had served communities for 25 years, and over that span of time had found many ways to capture the information they needed to drive and enable their work. However, it was split across systems and audiences, leading to much duplication of data, effort, and confusion. Even the most powerful system in use, Salesforce, had only been set up for the development department leaving other teams to patch together their own tools from MySQL, PHP, and more; and the development team’s data to stagnate. 

The Opportunity: Unifying Data to Unify Teams 

Looking to let their teams coordinate better to greater effect, the organization took advantage of the support TNB offered to map their data systems, relate the areas of concern, and migrate their disconnected systems into one modern, user-friendly Salesforce implementation. They knew TNB’s familiarity with tools like Salesforce, MySQL, and others would make them a good partner in putting the pieces together. 

The Solution: Out of Many, One (Source of Truth) 

The process of empowering the organzation began with mapping what kind of data each team needed and what relationships existed between them. That allowed us to design a multi-year plan to bring into one system, Salesforce, all of the data and processes that departments needed while not disrupting their routine work. 

Once the plan had been made, we were able to completely overhaul the development team’s Salesforce implementation to make it user-friendly, up to date, and ready to be expanded for other audiences. Next we laid out and imported child learning data from an externally built PHP/MySQL application into Salesforce, implementing a mobile interface for their staff and volunteers (Corps Members) to enter data on the go at the same time. The next step was the most sensitive – implementing the Corps Member management processes and securing data that included PII and criminal history checks, to ensure the children being served were well protected (and the volunteers’ data as well)! The in-house PHP/MySQL app had many specific legal requirements and steps hard-coded into it, and the migration into Salesforce needed to preserve the requirements but future proof the process to better serve the legal and compliance team. Finally, the higher education partner engagement process needed to be converted from an array of Word and Excel documents over email into a streamlined and dynamic process fed by simple forms and flexible HEP staff access needs. 

The Result: Reading from the Same Page 

With TNB’s support, the organization was able to bring all of these systems and more into one reliable, user-friendly place with great security, powerful automations, and enhanced reporting. No longer were staff having to ask each other “where is that?” or worried if they could trust the data, which freed them to focus more on their work with the children and volunteers. This project also reduced their costs to maintain custom applications, improved their reporting, and brought a shared workflow for all departments.