BRAC
OneBRAC: A Global Vision for Connected Fundraising and PartnershipThe Mission
BRAC is a global leader in developing and scaling proven solutions to poverty and inequality. Founded in 1972 in post-war Bangladesh, it has grown into one of the world’s largest development organizations—an ecosystem of programs and enterprises that has reached more than 145 million people across Asia, Africa, and beyond. BRAC’s community-driven, South-led model combines education, health, financial inclusion, social enterprise, and humanitarian action to create lasting systems change.
The Challenge
When BRAC USA’s CEO, Julia Roberts, joined the organization, she offered support to the ongoing global effort of strengthening how BRAC’s global network collaborated and fundraised. While Salesforce was already in use, each affiliate—across the U.S., Europe, Bangladesh, and Africa—operated in its own instance, making it difficult to share data, track partnerships, or coordinate global outreach. “We only had visibility in our own market,” Roberts recalled. “Our teams and leadership need to be as equipped as possible when they go into partnership meetings.”
Facing a rapidly evolving fundraising landscape, BRAC set out to modernize and unify its systems. The goal was a single, connected platform that could serve as the backbone for global fundraising, partnership management, and pipeline visibility. This meant consolidating multiple Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) environments into one unified Agentforce Nonprofit (formerly Nonprofit Cloud) instance.
The challenge extended beyond technology. BRAC’s decentralized governance model—essential to its locally led approach—created natural complexity in aligning processes and data across affiliates. A prior global review had proposed a sweeping, costly implementation that didn’t reflect BRAC’s pragmatic, community-driven ethos. Drawing on her experience leading Salesforce unification projects elsewhere, Roberts advocated for a leaner, more achievable model: one that prioritized functionality, user adoption, and immediate operational value.
Ultimately, BRAC needed a solution that respected local autonomy while enabling global transparency. The project would have to unify three Salesforce orgs, migrate and de-duplicate thousands of records, integrate spreadsheet-based workflows, and bring together diverse regional teams—all without disrupting active fundraising or field operations.
The Solution
Working with Idealist Consulting, BRAC designed and launched a global Salesforce Agentforce Nonprofit instance grounded in three principles: simplicity, collaboration, and scalability.
- MVP-first approach: BRAC focused on a Minimum Viable Product that delivered immediate visibility and functionality across affiliates.
- Empowered global governance: Each affiliate nominated a champion with decision-making authority, forming a working group to approve configurations and move the project forward.
- Hands-on, embedded training approach: BRAC’s teams learned directly through the user acceptance testing (UAT) process. Using Idealist’s Story Navigator test scripts as practical learning tools, BRAC’s Salesforce and Donation Processing Manager, Melyssa Muro, compiled these into a shared Google document accessible to all users. She also conducted targeted 1:1 and small-group sessions, ensuring each user received context-specific guidance and built confidence in real workflows.
- Smart data migration and security: Idealist consultant Grant Copenhaver developed a structured de-duplication protocol to merge thousands of records from three Salesforce orgs into a single, clean database.
- The OneBRAC Dashboard: A new global dashboard is organically becoming the heartbeat of collaboration, providing real-time visibility into fundraising pipelines, pending decisions, and key metrics. “It brings democratization of data,” Roberts said. “Now, every single person can log in at any time to access the information they need.”
Parallel to the main implementation, BRAC’s marketing teams migrated to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, integrating four regional websites for unified campaign tracking. With Idealist’s help, the team brought UTM source code building into MCAE to automatically generate campaign tracking links, connecting digital outreach directly to site traffic and donations, which are processed via Fundraise Up, and connect seamlessly into Salesforce
The Result
In just four months—at roughly 20 percent of the original projected cost—BRAC launched its unified global Salesforce instance. Adoption has quickly followed: within six weeks, the user base saw a 300% increase in active users across continents.
The impact was clear and measurable:
- Faster, clearer funding decisions: For inbound funding opportunities, BRAC conducts due diligence on potential partners and funders before making a formal Go/No-Go decision. With a new report built by the system administrator to highlight all pending opportunities, decision-makers could easily review and update records in real time, reducing nearly 100 outstanding items to fewer than 20 within just two weeks.
- Seamless collaboration: For the first time, teams could instantly see global partner engagement. “Before, that took months and chains and chains of emails,” Roberts said.
- Data-driven governance: The OneBRAC Dashboard is fast becoming the foundation for global fundraising meetings, replacing spreadsheets with shared, real-time insights.
- Marketing transformation: Unified web tracking and automated UTM link generation gave BRAC end-to-end visibility into how campaigns drive donations.
Roberts credits the project’s success to partnership and focus. “Idealist and Salesforce, separately and together, are working to move this community forward,” she said. “It took the trust of BRAC, the willingness to try something different, and Idealist saying, ‘We have a better way to do it.’”
The project has not only modernized BRAC’s systems but also redefined how its global teams collaborate. What began as a technical unification became a cultural one—an empowered, connected network now equipped to fundraise, partner, and innovate as OneBRAC.
People love the OneBRAC dashboard—it brings that democratization of data. [...] I can pull up a partner and now see what BRAC International, BRAC Bangladesh, and BRAC USA are all engaging with them on.
