As mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, or other craftsmen will attest, getting the right tool for the job is a necessary investment.  It is no different for fundraisers.

In donor development, an absolutely critical tool is the donor database.  And the more high performing the fundraiser is, the more she needs a tool that is customized for her particular needs.  Each individual nonprofit has its own way of segmenting donors, tracking contact history, managing mailings, generating reports, and other key functions.

Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, an agency that prepares low income individuals to start their own businesses, recently turned to CWR for help in this area. Development staff were spending too much time trying to get the right reports, generate mailings, and track donors.

CWR recommended the Salesforce platform as the basis of the customization.  We believe that Salesforce is in general an excellent choice for nonprofits for several reasons:

• It is free for nonprofits 
• Salesforce is a highly sucessful corporation serving the for profit world - it's not going away anytime soon
• Its "cloud computing" model is ideal for smaller organizations that shouldn't maintain its own infrastructure

Perhaps most importantly, Salesforce is a highly flexible solution that can be tailored for nonprofits.  CWR developed the right features for Renaissance's particular fundraising workflows.  We also added training, customized manuals, and technical support.

One of the advantages to our work with all three clients is our expertise in fundraising strategy, and not just the technical aspects of donor database.  In fact, CWR had in a previous project analyzed the agency's fundraising operations and made recommendations for improvement.  As a result, the design of Renaissance's database was seamlessly integrated with its strategy.

The end result?  The development director pointed to the database as a key reason why their recent campaign netted more money than ever in half the normal staff time required.

Our passion is to put the right tool in our client's hands to achieve just such results.