Charity data integrations Part 1

Blog

Best practice for Salesforce CRMs

Note: My expertise is in nonprofits, so charity data integrations will be my focus. However, many of the insights I share will be relevant to other sectors as well.

In my day to day life I speak to many nonprofits of all sizes and a common requirement is to integrate another source of data with Salesforce. Integrating Salesforce with another system can indeed make a big difference to nonprofits, saving them time and getting data into where it’s needed. This is especially true when it comes to integrating payment and interaction data from various sources such as donation pages, fundraising agencies, etc.

Data integrations are not easy, quick or cheap. They require that data management processes already exist or are developed during the project.  Integrations may also require close collaboration between internal teams and selected third-party providers.

In practice, since data integration requires skilled data engineers or ETL developers (ETL stands for Extract, Transform, Load – more about ETL tools below) who can write scripts to extract and transform data from disparate sources, charities often outsource the data integration task.

Our series of articles on charity data integration with a Salesforce CRM aim to help charities cut through the complexities of data integration. Even if you plan to outsource the task, relevant decision makers within your charity need to understand data management considerations that should be taken into account. Importantly, since data integration can be done in a variety of ways, we’ll talk you through the pros and cons of each.

What do we mean by data integration?

Your data may live in different parts of one system, or it may live in multiple systems that are managed by different vendors. Integration takes place when two or more systems access, synchronize and share data between themselves. In other words, data integration is a process of requesting and combining data from different sources into a unified data set. As a result, data integration makes it possible to view data in one central location so that your organisation can trust the data, analyse it and act on it.

Typical charity data integration scenarios

Below are typical examples of data that Giveclarity has extensive experience integrating with Salesforce CRM:

• Streetmarketing, telemarketing, direct mail agency files via our app Clarity Data Transform (CDT); more about our app in Part 3;
• Finance data shared between the Salesforce CRM and your ERP/Finance system via our accelerator Export to Finance; more about it below;
• Integration of the donation forms and payment processors, including direct debits. In our example this happens with Findock but it could be any other direct debit and other payments’ processing tools, such as iRaiser, RaiseNow, Fundraise Up, or other. The advantage of Findock is that it is native to Salesforce, with no integration needed to integrate payment data with Salesforce;
• Email marketing taking place in Salesforce Marketing Cloud with no integration needed since Marketing Cloud sits on the same platform as your Salesforce CRM.
• Sharing of donor data back with street marketing, telemarketing and direct mail agencies for further donor relationship nurturing.
• The option to share data from your CRM and other sources with a data warehouse for data archiving and analytics.

In Part 2, read about the what and why of integrating data with a Salesforce CRM that your charity absolutely must answer before you take action.

About the author:

Julia Narkeviciute joined Giveclarity after more than 12 years of experience in the charity sector. Julia helped set up Salesforce and integrate and migrate data at her human rights charity and learned a lot in the process. She is a certified Salesforce Administrator and has been involved in analysing charities’ business requirements when moving to a new CRM. Working at Giveclarity has allowed Julia to combine both her passion for nonprofits and user-friendly software.