The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health
Unifying Data to Amplify CareThe Mission
The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a nonprofit that provides residential services and a wide range of programs to children, teens, and young adults with rare and serious diseases whose best hope for a diagnosis or treatment is an NIH clinical research study.
The Inn serves more than 1,500 families from around the world each year providing recreational, therapeutic, and educational activities at no cost to families.
The Problem
The team at The Children’s Inn was facing challenges with their legacy donor management system, Raiser's Edge. The system was outdated, difficult to navigate, and lacked the flexibility to support the organization's growing needs. Data was siloed, reporting was cumbersome, and fundraising teams struggled to access real-time information and manage their pipelines effectively.
Peter, a key stakeholder at The Children's Inn, described the difficulties in pulling up information in their legacy system:
"We reached a point where only me and one other team member could reliably pull data from our Raiser’s Edge database. The frontline fundraisers didn’t feel confident using the system, which led to them not recording their fundraising activities. As a result, the burden of reporting and even basic tasks like looking up contact information fell entirely on our small database team. It became clear we needed a more user-friendly, cloud-based solution to streamline access and reduce the bottleneck."
This bottleneck was not only inefficient but also hindered the organization's ability to leverage its data for strategic decision-making. Fundraisers struggled to access real-time information, and leadership lacked the insights needed to drive the organization forward.
The Solution
To address these challenges, The Children's Inn at NIH partnered with Idealist Consulting to implement Salesforce as their new constituent relationship management (CRM) system. Using Idealist Consulting’s project management methodology, The Idealist Way, the teams moved through project phases strategically and efficiently, staying connected in Idealist’s proprietary tool Story Navigator to document the project, communicate between teams, and complete user testing. The project involved several key components:
- Data Migration: The Idealist Consulting team worked closely with The Children's Inn to migrate a large amount of data from Raiser's Edge to Salesforce, ensuring accurate and thoughtful mapping and preservation of critical relationships and historical data.
- Salesforce Configuration: Idealist Consulting configured Salesforce to meet The Children's Inn's specific requirements, including user stories for fundraising, grants management, and integration with their finance system, NetSuite.
- NetSuite Integration: Using MuleSoft, Idealist Consulting established a robust integration between Salesforce and NetSuite, enabling seamless data synchronization between the two systems. This included custom flows to manage opportunities, payments, and invoices across the platforms.
- Collaboration and Training: Throughout the project, Idealist Consulting facilitated close collaboration with the The Children's Inn team, providing training and knowledge transfer to ensure a smooth transition and ongoing system adoption.
Throughout the process, Idealist Consulting employed The Idealist Way service delivery model, ensuring clear communication and efficient progress. Peter noted the importance of this structured approach:
"Having structure and a very organized approach to project management was really our emphasis. We’re a small organization and a lot of people are wearing many hats, so it was just so important for us to have a resource guiding us, instead of us having to guide a lot of the actual project management."
The Result
The implementation of Salesforce has revolutionized operations at The Children's Inn. Fundraisers now have real-time access to donor information, pipeline management, and reporting capabilities directly from Outlook. Peter shared:
"We spent the last few weeks having biweekly meetings with all the fundraisers, and they're going through the functionality and loving that they can complete tasks right from Outlook, and they don't have to go through a remote desktop or run a query, so that has been really great."
The impact extends beyond just the fundraising team. Leadership and board members can now easily access and track results, enabling data-driven decision-making. The organization has also seen improvements in volunteer management and grant tracking, thanks to the flexibility of the Salesforce platform.
One of the most significant improvements has been the integration between Salesforce and NetSuite. This connection has streamlined financial processes, reducing manual data entry and improving accuracy. Peter reflected on this aspect:
"Especially with the NetSuite component, it's taken a lot of work to get there, and this has certainly been a lot more complicated and quite a project to replace our current system. But I think the idea is that in the future, we'll be able to have a better system in place that's actually updating things in real-time, and is much less manual."
The successful implementation of Salesforce has not only solved The Children's Inn's immediate challenges but has also positioned them for future growth supported by ongoing support through Idealist Consulting’s Managed Service offerings. With a flexible, cloud-based platform in place, they can continue to adapt and improve their processes as needs evolve.
Through their partnership with Idealist Consulting, The Children's Inn at NIH has transformed their donor management capabilities, empowered their staff, and laid a strong foundation for continued success in their mission to support families in need. This success story serves as an inspiring example of how the right technology, implemented thoughtfully, can drive significant positive change in nonprofit organizations.
Having Asana and Story Navigator was very helpful in setting up sprints and actually having some sort of project timeline and a path. It’ll be very helpful for people to look back on.
