Comhlamh

Intro:

Comhlámh is a member organisation that works to mobilise for an equitable and sustainable world. They support people in their journey of working for social justice working with volunteers, partner organisations and member groups to foster just, inclusive societies, through progressive grassroots activism in Ireland and internationally. In simple terms, they help people to build the skills they need to solve injustices in the World around them. We caught up with Chairman John Durcan, who’s experience as a senior technologist in Enterprise Ireland and his work with Comhlámh as a volunteer gives him unique expertise in not-for-profits and technology. He brought us through the work Comhlámh and Prodigy have completed on the Salesforce for nonprofits platform to help drive their impact.

Challenges:  

The challenge for Comhlámh was that while Salesforce for Nonprofits was in place, it wasn’t being fully utilised to help the team manage their processes.

“We embarked on a digital transformation project. Salesforce was a core part of that. Managing donors, plus we have memberships, was a manual process fraught with error and wasted time. We had also had an obligation to ensure maximum data security and information management was in place, and this was another core reason we decided on a digital overhaul.” 

A big challenge for Comhlámh was ensuring memberships didn’t lapse and this was an entirely manual process. “We had to reach out manually and email people once we spotted that they had lapsed or that they were due to renew. We were reactive in trying to stay on top of it, as opposed to having it more automated and watertight. Donations and memberships are the lifeblood of our organisation to keep it running so we can make a difference.”

Solution:

Prodigy helped Comhlámh by adding a customised membership module to manage recurring memberships and implemented a full training program for the team to truly utilise the existing features for managing volunteers and donors. “The training was excellent. Prodigy’s deep experience was evident. They really showed us what Salesforce was truly capable of for a not-for-profit” John told us. “It really helps cut down on unnecessary communication giving our team more time to focus on making an impact, and less time on laborious admin”.

John also spoke about the data protection and GDPR elements that using Salesforce helped them to take care of.

“We now manage all records from one place. No more spreadsheets, mail merges and email databases. Our data is secure, and easily accessed and we can splice it how and when we like for campaigns and communications.”

Impact: 

“From helping us cut admin time, to managing donors, sending campaigns to get them donating, and staying on top of existing donor payments, it’s had a great impact for Comhlámh. Salesforce is the best not-for-profit donor management tool I’ve come across to date for sure.”

Speaking about the future, John’s vision to use even more of the Salesforce platform. “We want to work with Prodigy again to create more targeted campaigns with custom messaging for the different membership and donor groups. For example we could do segmentation around fair trade, access to medicines and other issues, and Salesforce give us this capability”.

“We also have the vision to have renewal payments fully automated end-to-end along with our payroll payments.”

On Prodigy  

 “I’d highly recommend Prodigy. At every step they went above and beyond. and I wish them every success in the future.”

Learn more about how Salesforce can be used to drive impact by nonprofits.