Fueling a charitable organization with CRM instruments
We provided Salesforce solutions with some pro-bono scope to optimize the process of fundraising and grant issuing for a nonprofit organization Nova Ukraine that protects people affected by the Russian invasion. This has been a heartwarming example of how the best application of technology lies within purposeful projects and a showcase of how a good cause can multiply its effect when supported by a solid tech stack.
Nova Ukraine has been helping build a stable democratic Ukrainian society through fundraising since 2014, a year that became determinative for the country in many ways. Since then and until 2022, they have sent more than $71 million worth of aid distributed in collaboration with 3500 corresponding Ukraine-based volunteers and other nonprofits, and with support of more than 190,000 individual donors.
Nova Ukraine came together in California, USA, with an initial mission to oppose Russian aggression and influence on shaping Ukraine’s future. Since then, the team has not only been effectively procuring humanitarian aid, but also supported Ukrainian cultural efforts such as cinema production, education and sports. They have contributed in translating tech literature for Ukrainian students and promoted Ukrainian concerts and movie screenings. It was especially delightful to observe since a good old friend of Noltic, Ostap Korkuna, is a co-chairman of Nova Ukraine.
Since the full-scale war started in 2022, Nova Ukraine’s focus shifted completely towards saving people’s lives – in the first year of invasion the nonprofit managed to help more than 3.6 million Ukrainians. This includes delivering vital medical and hygiene supplies, providing food and shelter, evacuating refugees, aiding animals, rebuilding affected regions and more.
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The core of Nova Ukraine’s operations is divided into incoming donations and requests for grants. While for the first 8 years the workflow has been more or less manageable with basic manual tools like Google Workspace, the massive scaling of operations in February, 2022 made the need for automation more crucial than ever, and Salesforce became the most obvious choice. Still, while Salesforce officially provides direct nonprofit solutions, Nova Ukraine’s processes required a more customized approach.
The perfect CRM solution to provide effective and prompt support to the people in need would take into account the peculiarities of working with donors as well as with organizations applying to receive grants. That’s where Noltic came into play and was trusted to implement the team’s needs.
To provide grants to volunteers and smaller nonprofits, Nova Ukraine had to have an infrastructure for an automated request processing that would eliminate duplicates, simplify research and background checks on applicants, allow for managing approvals, financial fulfillment and reporting results. Creating an analytical system was one of the main tasks here for Noltic.
Working with incoming monetary or in-kind donations required aggregating existing and new donors’ information and having the means to communicate and reengage with them. A unified system was needed with transparent and inclusive payment processing, donors’ data collection and analysis for better understanding of the demographics and more efficient help aimed at Noltic’s homeland.
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- Implementing automation of business processes to streamline applicants’ requests with anti-duplicate safeguard logic;
- Setting up case validation rules;
- Creating an automated end-to-end testing system from the sign up process to all request stages using Webdriver.io to minimize regression defects and optimize feature delivery time;
- Improving automated Google Forms validation and implementing integration with Workato to optimize request processing for less errors made and more issues solved;
- Implementing multiple currency management to provide visibility across all currencies;
- Improving Salesforce-based UI/UX journey for application users;
- Setting up automated email notifications to volunteers and partners about the necessity to send reports, payment checks and other documentation to speed up project fulfillment;
- Configuration of Salesforce Community Cloud to minimize operational costs, thus more of each dollar goes to the cause;
- Implementing a record sharing system for adding third-party volunteers as limited access users;
- Linking requests with budget data under categories suitable for human-friendly future report analysis.
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Cooperating with Nova Ukraine, we now have achieved:
- About 205,000 donations from different platforms competently handled in one year since the full-scale invasion despite the need to migrate mid-year from the pre-Salesforce system;
- 5000 requests to CRM since May, 2022 with 3000+ fulfilled by around 90 Nova Ukraine coordinators;
- ~1400 partner nonprofit organizations in cooperation by March, 2023;
- $78M worth of distributed aid measured in about 20 tons of goods;
- Various payment methods integrated – crowdfunding, check, wire transfer, etc. – overall ~160 new features or enhancements implemented.
Nova Ukraine reported that funds raised by March, 2023 surpassed $85 million, allowing humanitarian projects to keep going.
Donations from different platforms handled in one year
Partner nonprofit organizations
- Automated workflow for request processing allowed to productively address more issues without much manual labor from employees;
- 360° view of donors’ information for organized reach and funding management resulted in donations increase;
- Simplified financial paperwork flow powered by automated email reminders about document submission;
- Funds activity overview with easy access to reports unified under one currency
Worth of distributed aid
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