The Salesforce Advantage - Why more museums, zoos, and aquariums are switching from Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce

Non-profit organizations are increasingly moving from Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce, recognizing the limitations and high costs associated with the former. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud offers a comprehensive, powerful, and customizable CRM solution that addresses the evolving needs of modern nonprofits. This article will walk through the migration process, outlining the benefits, challenges, and steps to ensure a smooth transition.

Benefits of Migrating to Salesforce

Migrating to Salesforce offers numerous advantages for cultural nonprofits and can significantly improve their operations:

1. Customization and Flexibility: Salesforce provides extensive customization options to tailor the CRM to your organization’s unique needs. Its flexibility allows for the integration of various tools and features, enhancing the efficiency of your fundraising and donor management processes. In addition, Salesforce empowers organizations beyond fundraising, into other crucial areas such as marketing, operations, and volunteer management. By being able to adapt to the organization’s needs, every aspect of their operations is efficiently managed.
2. User-Friendly Interface: Salesforce is known for its intuitive and user-friendly interface, which reduces training time and increases productivity. Staff members can quickly adapt to the new system, making the transition smoother. The next generation of workers entering the workforce are comfortable with technology and are accustomed to intuitive user experiences that Salesforce provides.
3. Comprehensive Data Management: Salesforce provides a 360 view of the customer to the whole organization. For example, a fundraiser can see all the fundraising aspects of a customer, as well as their visitation history, volunteerism, and engagement with other teams at the organization. The platform also easily integrates with various data sources and systems, making transitioning to it seamless. With Salesforce, cultural nonprofits can manage and analyze all their data in one place, leading them to make more informed decisions and have a holistic understanding of their donor.
4. Robust Reporting and Analytics: Salesforce offers powerful reporting and analytics tools out of the box that provide valuable insights into donor behavior and campaign performance. These tools enable organizations to generate detailed reports and gain deeper insights into their performance, helping them identify trends, measure impact, and make data-driven decisions. For systems that haven’t yet been integrated with Salesforce, Salesforce offers an additional add-on analytics product called Tableau that extends reporting beyond the Salesforce system.
5. Enhanced Collaboration: As a cloud-based platform, Salesforce facilitates real-time data access and collaboration across teams, improving communication and workflow efficiency. Chatter is a key feature here, acting as an internal social network for the organization. Chatter allows for contextual conversations, such as discussing a specific donation within the team, thereby improving the auditability of gift history and enhancing cross-departmental communication. All of our customers love that Chatter enables them to have organized, contextual discussions that are directly linked to relevant records and activities.
6. Improved Donor and Member Engagement: Salesforce offers robust tools for donor and member management allowing for advanced segmentation, personalization, and automation capabilities. By being able to engage more effectively, organizations can foster stronger relationships with their donors and members, enhancing their overall engagement strategies.
7. Scalability: Able to accommodate and grow with organizations of any size, Salesforce is the perfect CRM to handle increasing volumes of data and users without compromising performance. 

Challenges of Migrating to Salesforce

1. Complex Migration Process: Migrating data accurately and efficiently requires careful planning and execution. The data discovery, mapping, cleaning, and validation processes are critical to ensure data integrity during the transition. Aligning newly refined business processes with the old data can add additional complexities.
2. Cost and Time - Continuous Innovation: Migrating to any new CRM process should be considered a major investment. It begins with the initial investment and migration. However, this is not where it ends and should never be viewed as "one and done", but rather a starting point for continued investment in the technology to create a culture of innovation. The benefit of being on Salesforce is that the system can grow, change, adjust, flex, and adapt to the organization's needs, optimizing its business processes. Adapting a systems to ever evolving business requirements requires this culture of innovation, organizations may want to hire a system administrator and partner with companies to support their needs. 

Preparing for Migration

Transitioning to Salesforce can revolutionize how an organization manages its operations, however, the success of this migration hinges on thorough preparation. To ensure a smooth and effective transition, organizations should focus on several critical areas: 

1. Establish a Clear Vision: Before embarking on the migration journey, it’s crucial to have a clear vision of what the organization wants to achieve with Salesforce. Define the strategic benefits, as well as clear success outcome indicators that align with the organization’s overall mission and long-term objectives. Foglight Solutions has helped many organizations articulate a vision that aligns their expectations with the capabilities of the Salesforce platform.
2. Set Specific Goals: With a clear vision in place, the next step is to set specific, measurable goals. Establish short-term and long-term goals for the migration. Include metrics, such as improved reporting accuracy, increased donor retention and engagement, or reduced administrative workload. More importantly, make sure goals are realistic and achievable within a set timeframe.
3. Align Leadership and Key Stakeholders: Successful migrations require strong leadership alignment and it is essential that these key stakeholders are fully committed to the transition and support the necessary changes. The leadership team should be engaged early in the planning process and the vision and goals should be clearly communicated with them. Leadership buy-in ensures that the migration will have the necessary resources and support.
4. Communicate with the Larger Team: Effective communication is crucial to prepare your team for the migration. Transparent and consistent communication helps manage expectations and reduces resistance to change. Develop a communication plan that regularly updates and gives opportunities for their feedback. Additionally, educate the team on the benefits of the migration and how it will impact the organization as well as their specific roles.
5. Data Clean Up: Data quality is fundamental to the success of the migration. Before transferring data from Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce, it’s essential to clean and organize your data. Prior to migrating, organizations should conduct a comprehensive audit of existing data, while identifying and removing duplicates, outdated information, and inaccuracies. Here again Foglight Solutions can help identify common data pain points to focus on and provide recommended mitigation strategies. 

Ready to Migrate? 

Migrating from Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce is a significant undertaking, but the benefits far outweigh the challenges. With careful planning, thorough training, and a focus on process improvement, your nonprofit can achieve a seamless transition and unlock Salesforce’s full potential. This migration will empower your team, enhance donor management, and drive overall digital success.

For additional support and expertise, consider partnering with a Salesforce Registered Consulting Partner like Foglight Solutions to guide you through the migration process and ensure a smooth and successful transition.