Gordon College

Salesforce implementation for advancement

Gordon College is one of the top Christian liberal arts colleges in the United States. They currently host over 1,600 undergraduate students and strive to “stretch the mind, deepen the faith and elevate the contribution that Gordon students and graduates make” to our world.

Challenge: Advancement CRM must integrate with student info

The development team was struggling to foster and maintain long-term relationships with students after they graduated. They needed to expand their fundraising and major gifts management capability with a new CRM.

Drawing on twenty years’ experience working with Higher Education Advancement departments, the Heller team developed and executed a plan to implement a new advancement tool that would provide Gordon’s Advancement Officers the ability to launch strategies not previously possible, primarily focused around major donors. In addition, Heller’s technical team devised means to share information with both the Student Information System, as well as sophisticated online tools to complete this foundational phase.

Solution: A customized Salesforce advancement package

By working together through detailed discovery and process mapping sessions, Heller and Gordon’s joint project team was able to develop an effective solution to achieve the college’s goals. One of the first benefits was that Salesforce.com enabled the college’s gift officers and solicitors to store much more constituent data in the system, eliminating the need for extensive external notes and spreadsheets. Many elements of manual data entry were also eliminated, saving hours of effort by college staff. All this data is now available on desktops and any mobile device, enabling office and on-the-go accessibility required for more effective in person interactions. The flexibility of the Salesforce platform allowed the Heller team to integrate effectively with the established business processes and systems that the college depended on. To monitor scholarships programs, Heller added in custom objects to track.

Result: A modern, flexible advancement CRM

With a customized system built on the flexibility of an integrated CRM platform, Gordon College is now able to get deep insights on their alumni and supporters. They are able to continue interacting with alumni long after they leave the institution and create effective communication and fundraising programs tailored to each graduate’s interests and history.

Through the discovery, implementation, and customization process, Heller was able to help Gordon College staff understand the deep foundations of Salesforce.com, and teach them how to manage and maintain their system.

They are now able to control the quality of their data, evaluate additional extensions of their system, and understand both the integration impact as well as the time and effort any system additions would entail. The Gordon College team is currently working with their new capabilities and considering which of the many tools and features available in the AppExchange could apply to their future needs.

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