Global Fund for Children
Empowering Global Impact with Salesforce Nonprofit CloudThe Mission
Global Fund for Children (GFC) is a global nonprofit dedicated to building a world where all children are safe, strong, and valued. Since 1994, GFC has partnered with over 1,000 local organizations to reach more than 11 million children, empowering young people and communities to drive global change. By discovering, funding, and coaching truly community-based organizations with unique missions and culturally relevant approaches, GFC champions bold ideas that advance children’s rights and secure a safe, vibrant, and equitable future for all. Through its work, GFC addresses the complex challenges young people face.
The Problem
Global Fund for Children (GFC) was struggling with a fragmented technology infrastructure that was holding back operational efficiency. Their grant management and fundraising operations were spread across multiple disconnected systems, forcing them to rely heavily on spreadsheets. The limitations of their legacy platforms, including Blackbaud Raiser's Edge, made it difficult to customize solutions to meet their specific needs.
The challenges were compounded by the requirement for comprehensive multilingual support across four languages, adding complexity to the migration process. Operating in 40 different countries, GFC needed sophisticated currency management capabilities to handle multiple international currencies effectively. These limitations were not just technical inconveniences – they were actively hampering GFC's ability to scale its operations and effectively engage with grantee partners.
The Solution
Before beginning implementation, GFC invested nine months in careful preparation. This thorough groundwork proved invaluable, as it enabled all departments to understand how they would be impacted by the transition and set realistic expectations for the project ahead. With this foundation in place, GFC chose to partner with Idealist Consulting to implement Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (NPC).
As Palmer Shepherd, Vice President of Operations and Governance at GFC shared, "We pulled in almost every department. So every department had spoken to [us] and knew how they might be impacted by this transition. And I think that went a long way in helping us prepare to do good work with you."
The implementation was strategically divided into two main phases. The first phase focused on grant management, where the team implemented Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud with custom workflows for application approval, requirement submission, and disbursement scheduling and confirmation. This included extensive screen flows to guide users through complex processes, manual features to address functionality gaps, and a comprehensive translation management system. The team also integrated FinDock for incoming payment processing and developed sophisticated currency management systems to handle international transactions.
The second phase addressed fundraising needs with a deliberately streamlined approach. Learning from the complexity of the first phase, the team kept this portion simpler to maintain budget and timeline constraints. They implemented Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) for marketing automation and created crucial integrations with their accounting system, Intacct, to eliminate duplicate data entry, a pain point that had previously required maintaining separate spreadsheets for daily reconciliation.
The project's success was built on a strong leadership structure and a project team of key stakeholders from GFC, including working with an external consultant for project preparation and continued support. This team met weekly with the Idealist Consulting team to keep communication channels open and maintain project timelines.
Communication proved to be a crucial factor in the implementation's success. The GFC and Idealist Consulting teams utilized Slack as their primary communication channel, which made ongoing communication seamless, allowing the GFC team to access their Idealist consultant team as needed.
Phase 2 also included the implementation of Outcomes Management in Salesforce, alongside configuring a separate application for the Funder Safeguarding Collaborative, which is connected to GFC but operates as an independent organization. At the time of go-live, the outcomes team at GFC was still in the process of defining their outcome indicators and goals. To support this, the Idealist team developed a basic framework that GFC could use as a starting point, ensuring that the team would be ready to configure and implement their specific needs as they finalized their outcome metrics in the next phase of the project.
The Result
The implementation transformed GFC's operations by creating a unified, modern platform that connects their grantmaking and fundraising activities. The new system provided enhanced visibility across all operations for the GFC team.
Among the most significant improvements was the ability to manage grants in both GBP and USD separately, streamlining international operations. The team successfully implemented automated naming conventions for funding awards and created sophisticated processes for donor communication suppression in marketing campaigns. While some challenges remained, such as managing multiple templates in Omni Studio for letters of agreement across different languages and scenarios, the overall system provided a substantial improvement over their previous infrastructure.
One GFC team member shared, "I love the fact that we're now able to do our grantmaking in GBP and USD, and we're able to separate out those currencies. That is already making a huge difference in our lives, in terms of reconciling expenditures and codes."
The transformation went beyond technical improvements to create fundamental changes in how GFC operated. Staff across departments gained a clearer understanding of their processes and how to leverage the platform effectively.
The project established clear frameworks for ongoing support and system maintenance through Idealist Consulting’s Managed Services, with a structured approach for prioritizing enhancement requests. Most importantly, the implementation established a foundation for sustained growth and improved impact on GFC's mission to support children worldwide. The success of this project demonstrated the importance of thorough preparation, strong partnership, and realistic expectations in major technology transformations. Having a clear understanding between teams that the work doesn’t end at “launch”, helped set the stage for continued improvement and adaptation with their Managed Services support to ensure the system meets GFC's evolving needs.
Idealist was very aligned with our mission and work. They were a thoughtful partner that regularly checked in to make sure we were on track and the build was proceeding as needed. The Project Manager and Solutions Architect were very knowledgeable and well organized. When we found issues that needed more attention, we were able to collaborate to find solutions. I would highly recommend them as a partner.
