The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation
Modernizing legacy systems to preserve America’s landmarks.The Mission
The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that preserves, restores, and honors the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
The Foundation brings private support and expertise to:
- Lead transformative preservation and improvement projects
- Connect people to their family stories via the family history center on Ellis Island and the free online database of historic arrival records
- Enrich the visitor experience with the audio/self-guided tours, interactive museum exhibits/technology
- Foster public interest in the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island
The Foundation works in partnership with the National Park Service, which operates the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island.
The Challenge
The Foundation found itself at a critical technological crossroads in its mission to preserve and honor two of America's greatest landmarks. Their existing technology infrastructure, primarily built around a legacy system called Laminas, had become an impediment to their operations and growth.
The Foundation was dealing with several challenges:
Data fragmentation and system complexity created roadblocks for the organization, with operations spread across multiple disparate systems and inefficient, manual processes for troubleshooting. For example, Laminas was creating considerable operational friction on a daily basis.
Integration limitations further complicated their operations. Their e-commerce solution had fallen behind technological standards. Additionally, the foundation's on-site museum kiosks, website services, and fulfillment processes all required separate management, resulting in siloed experiences and data.
Due to system limitations, the team had developed numerous manual workarounds that consumed valuable time and resources. Administrative tasks like GDPR compliance requests required extensive manual effort across multiple systems, taking staff away from mission-critical activities.
As the Foundation undertook a revitalization of the Ellis Island Museum, the nonprofit needed a technology foundation that could support advanced visitor engagement tools, but was constrained by their legacy systems. With a multi-year digital transformation effort underway and leadership spearheading these initiatives, the Foundation sought a technology partner who could modernize their operations to a more robust, unified, and efficient platform.
The Solution
Idealist Consulting partnered with the Foundation to implement a comprehensive digital transformation strategy built around Salesforce's Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) and MuleSoft's Anypoint integration platform. This powerful combination provided the foundation for a unified, efficient system that could meet the Foundation’s unique requirements.
Unified Data Management with Nonprofit Cloud
The solution centered on implementing Nonprofit Cloud for comprehensive constituent, donor, and order management, establishing a single source for all stakeholder data. This covers a range of functional areas, including donor recognition lists and public-facing donor search engines, centralized management of the Wall of Honor list and its business processes, order information for e-commerce customer service inquiries, and improved privacy management for email and direct mail channels. By leveraging the broader toolset offered through the Nonprofit Cloud on Core solution - including features like Actionable Relationship Center (ARC) - staff gained deeper insights into donor behavior, purchase history, and participation patterns. This comprehensive perspective allowed for more strategic stewardship, personalized outreach, and informed decision-making across development, marketing, and customer service teams.
One of the most significant improvements resulted from utilizing Data Processing Engine to automate complex membership calculations. This was complemented by an automated giving level recognition system that accurately tracked total giving to specific causes, enhancing donor recognition and stewardship.
Seamless Integration Architecture
The integration architecture was carefully designed to connect the Foundation's diverse web of systems. Idealist deployed MuleSoft Anypoint as a central integration layer to connect multiple external systems to Salesforce, creating a hub-and-spoke model that simplified the overall technology landscape. The team created APIs that mimicked legacy system interfaces, minimizing disruption during the transition, and built custom document generation solutions that dramatically reduced costs compared to third-party alternatives.
Process Automation and Marketing Modernization
Marketing operations were modernized by enhancing their existing Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) instance within their core NPC implementation. This upgrade, which involved adding features and optimizing their use of the tool, enabled more effective constituent engagement and unified marketing intelligence with the main constituent database.
Process automation eliminated significant manual work across the organization. The team streamlined the name approval process for Wall of Honor inscriptions, created automated GDPR compliance flows to efficiently handle international visitor privacy requests, and developed an automated nightly recalculation of membership status to ensure data accuracy.
Project Approach
The project approach was marked by careful planning and adaptability, with the Idealist team creating comprehensive architecture and requirements documentation.
Throughout the engagement, the team demonstrated remarkable flexibility in adapting to evolving requirements and leaned on their expertise in both NPC and MuleSoft to deliver an integrated solution. They worked closely with the Foundation’s leadership to navigate challenges, including documentation gaps in the emerging NPC platform, late engagement from third-party vendors, and the inherent complexity of the Foundation's unique business processes.
The Result
The comprehensive digital transformation delivered by Idealist Consulting has modernized the Foundation’s operations and prepared them for the next chapter in their mission. The impact has been felt across the organization's operations and constituent engagement.
Centralized, Trusted Data
All constituent data now lives in a single, accessible system. This transformation from manual data manipulation to automated, reliable calculations has changed how staff interact with their data, enabling them to focus on relationship building rather than data validation.
Operational Efficiency and Enhanced Visibility
E-commerce and administrative tasks that once required manual manipulation across multiple systems are now automated. The GDPR compliance process that previously demanded hours of work across disparate systems now runs through a streamlined flow, dramatically reducing workload while improving compliance accuracy.
Leadership and staff now have comprehensive visibility into constituent engagement across all touchpoints – from museum visits to online donations and Wall of Honor purchases. This 360-degree view enables more personalized relationship management and data-driven decision-making without waiting for manual reports from multiple systems.
Simplified Administrative Experience
With data consolidated from multiple disparate systems into a unified platform, administrative staff can troubleshoot issues, manage processes, and support operations more efficiently.
Future-Ready Platform and Cost Savings
The new platform provides a solid foundation for ongoing digital transformation initiatives, including planned improvements to on-site Wi-Fi connectivity and enhanced museum experiences. As the Foundation evolves its programs and services, the modern, flexible architecture will scale with their needs and ambitions.
The Foundation realized significant cost savings through the implementation, particularly with custom MuleSoft integrations to simplify document generation that provided substantial savings compared to expensive third-party alternatives requiring ongoing licensing fees. These savings can now be redirected to mission-focused activities rather than technical overhead.
The Foundation’s leadership expressed gratitude and positive feedback on the transformation, which has positioned the nonprofit to better achieve its mission of preserving, restoring, and honoring America's iconic landmarks for future generations.
Ready to set up your team with a future-ready system?
