Kindsight Ascend

An advancement and fundraising product, built on Salesforce

Kindsight Ascend is a managed fundraising product built on the Salesforce platform. It extends Salesforce to support the needs of nonprofit advancement and development teams, providing purpose-built fundraising functionality within the Salesforce ecosystem. With Ascend, organizations manage donors, gifts, campaigns, and engagement in a single Salesforce-based solution, reducing the need for disconnected tools or extensive custom development.

Designed as a native Salesforce managed package, Ascend leverages Salesforce’s underlying data model, reporting, security, and integration capabilities while adding fundraising-specific features out of the box. It is well suited for organizations seeking a Salesforce-based fundraising solution that supports complex donor relationships, campaign management, and development operations without positioning itself as a full enterprise or operational CRM.

Kindsight Ascend

An advancement and fundraising product, built on Salesforce

Key benefits of Kindsight Ascend

Unified Constituent Data

Ascend brings donor records, giving history, relationships, and engagement activity together within Salesforce. Advancement teams gain a consistent, centralized view of constituents, making it easier to understand donor behavior and coordinate outreach without managing multiple systems.

Purpose-Built Fundraising Capabilities

The product includes core fundraising functionality such as donor and household management, gift and pledge processing, campaign and appeal tracking, and event-related fundraising support. These features are designed specifically for philanthropic workflows, allowing teams to work effectively with minimal configuration.

Automation and Operational Efficiency

Built on Salesforce, Ascend supports automation through Salesforce’s native tools and Ascend-specific workflows. Development teams can streamline moves management, assign follow-up actions, and reduce manual data entry, improving efficiency while maintaining flexibility in how processes are configured.

Scalability Within the Salesforce Ecosystem

As a Salesforce managed package, Ascend scales alongside growing fundraising programs. Organizations benefit from Salesforce’s cloud infrastructure and can integrate Ascend with other Salesforce products and AppExchange solutions, such as marketing tools, analytics, or donor intelligence services, as needs evolve.

Common use cases for Ascend

Unified Constituent Data

Major Giving and Moves Management
Advancement teams use Ascend to manage major donor pipelines, track relationships, and document interactions over time. Gift officers can plan and execute moves management strategies directly within Salesforce, supporting more intentional cultivation and stewardship.

High-Volume Gift Processing

Ascend supports efficient processing of large volumes of gifts, including pledges, recurring donations, and batch imports. This makes it well suited for annual funds, giving days, and large campaigns where speed, accuracy, and reporting consistency are critical.

Campaign and Donor Engagement Tracking

Fundraising campaigns and appeals are managed using Salesforce campaigns enhanced by Ascend’s fundraising features. Teams can monitor progress toward goals, track donor participation, and connect digital fundraising activity into the broader donor record.

Fundraising Reporting and Insights

Ascend leverages Salesforce reporting and dashboards to provide real-time visibility into fundraising performance. Development leaders can review pipeline health, campaign results, and donor trends without exporting data to external tools, supporting data-informed decision-making.

How we can help you with Kindsight Ascend

Heller Consulting is an experienced implementation partner for Kindsight Ascend. We support nonprofits evaluating Salesforce-based fundraising solutions by helping them determine whether Ascend aligns with their fundraising goals, internal capacity, and broader technology strategy.

Our team guides organizations through Ascend implementations, including discovery, configuration, data migration, and training. We also support integrations with other Salesforce tools and third-party systems, reporting and dashboard design, and ongoing optimization. Our goal is to ensure Ascend is implemented thoughtfully and used confidently, so it can serve as a strong foundation for fundraising and donor engagement on Salesforce.

Case Study: An ambitious CRM to match a world-class school

Loyola University Chicago

Faced with an aging CRM that didn’t meet its needs, Loyola University Chicago partnered with Heller Consulting to implement Salesforce and Kindsight Ascend. Heller led the team to define priorities, design a phased roadmap, and deliver a customized solution that included enhanced gift processing, more reliable reporting, improved donor research, and role-based dashboards.

Loyola now has an integrated CRM ecosystem that better supports constituent management, external data integration, and complex relationship tracking, supporting its fundraising goals.

Ready to get started?

If you work for a nonprofit, education, or healthcare organization and you need help with your technology project, get in touch!