Proven Results

Real Salesforce Transformations for Nonprofits

See how we've helped organizations like yours achieve CRM stability, clarity, and long-term success – with documented results and client testimonials.

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My Approach

Turning Complex Systems into Reliable Tools

With over 10 years in nonprofit Salesforce consulting, these case studies demonstrate our approach: turning organically grown systems into reliable, user-friendly tools. Each features challenges addressed, solutions implemented, and quantifiable results.

Fair Assignment System

Policy Research Organization

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Grant & Finance Architecture

Foundation | Multi-Phase Lifecycle

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Impact Metrics Architecture

Policy Think Tank | Custom Tracking

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Financial Compliance Architecture

Foundation | Internal Control Design

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Success Stories

Case Studies: Real Results for Real Nonprofits

Workload Governance

Designing a Fair, Transparent Fact-Checking Assignment System

Policy Research Organization

The Challenge

Every publication goes through fact-checking. Every assignment matters. Before every single assignment, the editor had to pause and think: Who reviewed it most recently? Who has carried more load? Who declined last week? Is there any conflict? Am I being fair?

  • Fairness lived entirely in one person's head
  • Cognitive bandwidth problem, not a reviewer problem
  • High-stakes environment requiring defensible decisions

Solutions

  • Designed a fairness model with two rules: eligibility (recency) + priority (workload)
  • Dynamic median logic recalculates eligibility daily (not fixed "30 days")
  • Automatic conflict filtering (authors, collaborators, project managers)
  • Cooldown logic for recent declines and protected windows

Results

Near Zero

Assignment Time

100%

Defensible Decisions

Outcome

The editor no longer had to mentally simulate equity before every click. What changed wasn't the reviewers—it was the cognitive burden on leadership.

Fairness Automated

Workload Governance Framework

Grant & Finance

From intake to disbursement

Grant Architecture

Rebuilding a Grantmaking System — From Intake to Disbursement

Foundation | Multi-Phase Grant Lifecycle

The Challenge

When I joined this organization, they had Applications and Reviews. Applicant information lived as fields directly on the Application record. There were no Application Contacts. No relational structure. No clean way to track people across cycles. And intake ran through a large FormAssembly integration. It worked. But it was fragile and hard to evolve.

  • No relational structure for applicants, co-PIs, and collaborators
  • Complex FormAssembly integration that was hard to maintain
  • Program and finance disconnected — spreadsheet handoffs

Solutions

  • Phase 1: Introduced Application Contact junction object — multiple applications per person, accurate institutional tracking, clean reporting across cycles
  • Phase 2: Built four-path processing architecture with duplicate prevention, file classification, and downstream automation
  • Phase 3: Designed finance layer (Expense Request, Budget Line, Budget Change, Expense Payment) with Bill.com integration
  • Phase 4: Integrated with Submittable for portal experience while maintaining Salesforce as the system of record

Results

0

Manual Handoffs

100%

Compliance

Real-time

Finance Visibility

Outcome

Over the course of the engagement, the organization achieved:

  • Clean, relational data model — Applicants and collaborators became real Contacts with accurate role history and multi-cycle visibility, eliminating duplicate records and enabling reliable cross-cycle reporting.
  • Reliable intake at scale — The four-path processing architecture handled complex grant types, conditional logic, file classification, and duplicate prevention — turning fragile FormAssembly submissions into structured, automation-ready records.
  • Seamless program-to-finance bridge — Grant recommendations automatically generated financial records, prefilled budgets, calculated payment schedules, enforced W-9 compliance, and routed multi-level approvals — removing spreadsheets and manual handoffs entirely.
  • Compliant, auditable disbursement — Payments synced directly to Bill.com with YTD rollups and threshold-based controls, reducing compliance risk and administrative overhead.
  • Sustainable architecture through platform change — When intake moved to Submittable, the core Salesforce relational model and finance layer remained intact and continued to drive downstream processes without rework.

The result: a grant lifecycle where program decisions flowed directly into financial execution — cleanly, compliantly, and with full traceability — allowing the team to focus on mission rather than system maintenance.

This is the kind of disciplined infrastructure I build for grantmaking organizations: systems that connect intent to impact without hidden manual work or fragility.

Impact Architecture

Designing Impact Metrics Before They Were a Product Feature

Policy Think Tank | Custom Impact Tracking

The Challenge

At the time, Salesforce didn't have built-in impact tracking. Nonprofit Cloud didn't exist in its current form. And yet, our think tank needed to answer a deceptively simple question: How do we know we're actually making change in the world?

  • No system to track outputs, outcomes, and impact
  • Scrambling for anecdotes when funders asked for evidence
  • Disconnected program data from fundraising reporting

Solutions

  • Phase 1: Cross-department requirements gathering — interviewed Communications, Editorial, Policy Relations, Academic Relations, and Fundraising
  • Phase 2: Designed custom Impact (Success Indicator) object with four record types and structured taxonomy for outputs, outcomes, and impact
  • Phase 3: Built junction object connecting Impact records to Contacts — enabling queryable cross-functional influence patterns
  • Phase 4: Aligned system with fundraising reporting — outputs, outcomes, and impact now queryable for funder reports

Results

Queryable

Impact Data

100%

Funder Ready

Custom

Pre-Nonprofit Cloud

Outcome

I translated mission language into data structure. Years later, Salesforce formalized Impact Management in Nonprofit Cloud. But at the time, this was custom architecture. And it worked.

Impact Architecture

Outputs, outcomes & impact

Financial Compliance

Embedded in architecture

Compliance Architecture

Embedding Financial Compliance Directly Into the System

Foundation | Internal Control Design

The Risk

Grants were being recommended and disbursed. But financial controls relied heavily on vigilance:

  • Was a W-9 on file?
  • Had this payee crossed the IRS reporting threshold?
  • Was the amount high enough to require executive approval?
  • Had a budget change been formally approved before overspending?

Each of those checks required attention. Attention fails under pressure.

Solutions

  • Threshold Enforcement: System tracks year-to-date payable totals by Account — blocks disbursement if IRS reporting thresholds approached and documentation missing
  • Multi-Level Approval Routing: Amounts automatically route based on thresholds — standard approvals to VP/CEO for high amounts
  • Budget Governance: Payments exceeding approved budget lines require Budget Change records with their own approval chain
  • Payment Infrastructure & Sync: Once approved, payments sync automatically to Bill.com with inherited parent data

Results

Structural

Compliance

Audit

Ready

0

Manual Reviews

Outcome

Compliance shouldn't depend on vigilance. It should be structural.
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