At Believe in Me, our mission is to support marginalized youth and provide them with the opportunities they need to thrive. As our organization grows, so do the complexities of managing donor data, campaigns, and financial transactions. These tasks are crucial for ensuring that we can continue our work, but they often require more resources than we have available.
Enter Jax Consulting. This incredible team of Salesforce administrators and developers stepped in at a critical moment. With their expertise, we were able to overcome a significant challenge that was limiting our efficiency and slowing our operations. This blog highlights the partnership between Believe in Me and Jax Consulting, focusing on the incredible work their team has done to integrate our Salesforce instance with our giving platform, GiveButter.
The Challenge: Manual Data Entry and its Drawbacks
As a nonprofit with a lean team, Believe in Me has always prioritized efficiency. Every hour spent on administrative tasks is an hour that could be dedicated to advancing our mission. However, as we expanded our fundraising efforts, we found ourselves buried in manual data entry, which was consuming valuable time.
Our giving platform, GiveButter, is a fantastic tool that allows our donors to contribute to our cause easily. However, integrating it with our Salesforce system proved to be a challenge. Every time a donor made a contribution, our staff had to manually enter the transaction details into Salesforce. This process included inputting campaign information, updating contact details, recording opportunities, and tracking payment data. It wasn’t just time-consuming—it was prone to human error.
Here are a few of the specific challenges we faced:
Limited Staff Availability: With a small team, manually entering data into two systems took up hours of staff time that could have been better spent on other initiatives.
Dual-Entry Issues: Every transaction had to be entered into both GiveButter and Salesforce. This increased the risk of errors, as data often didn’t match between the two platforms.
Human Error: With manual entry, there’s always the risk of missing or misentering critical details, which could affect donor engagement and financial reporting.
Delayed Donor Follow-Up: Because data entry was slow, our development director couldn’t send thank-you notes to donors promptly. This delay impacted our ability to maintain strong relationships with our supporters.
The combination of these challenges was creating bottlenecks in our operations. We needed a solution that could streamline this process and allow our team to focus on what truly matters—serving marginalized youth.
The Solution: Jax Consulting’s Salesforce Integration Expertise
That’s when Jax Consulting came to our rescue. Andrew and Teagan Purpura, the leaders of Jax Consulting, recognized the operational burden we were facing and generously offered their Salesforce admin and development team’s expertise to help us. Their task? To build a seamless integration between GiveButter and Salesforce that would eliminate the need for manual data entry and ensure data accuracy across platforms.
Jax Consulting’s team, led by Rajesh Yeddula, designed a custom solution tailored to our specific needs. Rajesh, who leads their entire offshore Salesforce practice and has a deep passion for supporting charitable causes, worked tirelessly to ensure the integration would meet all of our requirements. His leadership and expertise were instrumental in building the REST API connection that automatically pulls data from GiveButter into Salesforce. This integration imports all the critical details we previously had to enter manually, including:
Campaigns: Information about each fundraising campaign is now automatically synced between GiveButter and Salesforce, ensuring that all data is consistent.
Opportunities: Each donation made through GiveButter is instantly recorded as an opportunity in Salesforce, giving us real-time insight into our fundraising efforts.
Contacts: When a new donor makes a contribution, their contact details are automatically imported into Salesforce, ensuring that our records are always up to date.
Payment Data: Every transaction is automatically recorded, giving our finance team instant access to accurate financial data for reporting and reconciliation.
Not only did Jax Consulting build this integration, but they also ensured that the system refreshes every hour, meaning our data is always up to date. This real-time connection has been a game-changer for our operations, and we no longer have to worry about discrepancies between platforms.
The Benefits of the Integration
The benefits of this integration have been transformative for Believe in Me. Here’s how Jax Consulting’s work has impacted our organization:
1. Staff Efficiency
The most immediate and noticeable impact has been on our team’s efficiency. What used to take hours of manual data entry can now be done automatically, freeing up time for our staff to focus on more mission-critical tasks. The integration has allowed us to reduce the administrative burden on our already stretched staff, enabling us to operate more effectively with the resources we have.
2. Data Accuracy
Before the integration, we often encountered data discrepancies between GiveButter and Salesforce due to manual entry errors. These errors would cause issues during financial reconciliation and donor follow-up. With the new API connection, we no longer have to worry about dual-entry errors. The data is automatically synced, ensuring that both platforms reflect the same, accurate information.
3. Improved Donor Engagement
One of the most significant improvements has been in how we engage with our donors. Previously, it could take days before our development director had all the information needed to thank donors for their contributions. Now, with real-time data syncing, our development director can send thank-you emails and follow-ups to donors almost immediately after their gift is processed. This timely engagement is crucial for building strong relationships with our supporters and showing them how much we value their contributions.
4. Streamlined Reconciliation
Reconciling financial data between GiveButter and Salesforce used to be a time-consuming process that took up valuable staff hours each month. Now, with the integration in place, reconciling data is a breeze. The automated import of payment data ensures that all transactions are accounted for in both systems, saving us countless hours each month and improving the accuracy of our financial reporting.
The Impact on Believe in Me
This project has had a profound impact on Believe in Me. By streamlining our operations and improving the accuracy of our data, Jax Consulting has helped us operate more efficiently and effectively. The integration has allowed us to be more responsive to our donors, which strengthens our relationships and supports our fundraising efforts.
In addition, the time we’ve saved by eliminating manual data entry has freed up our staff to focus on what matters most—serving marginalized youth. Our team can now dedicate more time to strategic initiatives, outreach, and program development, all of which are critical to our mission.
We are deeply grateful to Rajesh Yeddula for leading this project with such expertise and passion. His dedication to supporting charitable organizations aligns perfectly with our values at Believe in Me. We’re also thankful to the entire team at Jax Consulting for their incredible generosity and expertise. They have made a lasting difference in our organization, and we are excited about the continued growth and success that this partnership will bring.
A Heartfelt Thank You to Jax Consulting
At Believe in Me, we know that we can’t do this work alone. It’s partnerships like the one we have with Jax Consulting that enable us to continue making a difference in the lives of marginalized youth. We are incredibly grateful to Andrew and Teagan Purpura for their generosity and to the entire Jax Consulting team for their hard work and dedication to our cause.
The Salesforce and GiveButter integration has been a game-changer for our organization, and we can’t thank Jax Consulting enough for making it happen. As we continue to grow, we look forward to future collaborations with Jax Consulting and other partners who share our vision of creating a better future for all youth.
Call to Action
If you’d like to learn more about Jax Consulting and their services, we encourage you to visit their website. And if you’re a donor or supporter of Believe in Me, we invite you to explore the seamless giving experience made possible by the new Salesforce-GiveButter integration. Your contributions make all the difference, and now, thanks to Jax Consulting, we can engage with you more effectively than ever before.