The Non-GMO Project
Empowering food transparency with forward-thinking tech.The Mission
Founded in 2007, The Non-GMO Project has grown from a grassroots initiative into North America's most trusted seal for GMO avoidance. As a mission-driven nonprofit, they operate on the belief that everyone deserves to know what's in their food and should have access to non-GMO choices. Through their rigorous verification program, marked by the distinctive Butterfly label, they've become a powerful force in preserving non-GMO food supplies and supporting organic agriculture. Their work extends beyond certification to helping shoppers make knowledgeable, mindful decisions.
"At the core, the Non-GMO Project is about informed choice. It's about how we allow shoppers, consumers, eaters, nutritionists, and healthcare practitioners transparency into what's available in retail stores so they can make an informed choice on what they want to put into their body." - Shawn Kemp, Information Systems Renewal Officer at Non-GMO Project
The Problem
In 2023, as part of their evolution toward an even more comprehensive approach to food transparency, The Non-GMO Project partnered with Idealist Consulting to revolutionize their technical infrastructure. This transformation wasn't just about improving current operations—it was about building a foundation for the future of food transparency and informed consumer choice.
The Non-GMO Project operated with two disconnected systems: a Salesforce instance managing contacts and accounts, and a separate system handling product verification datasets. This division created significant friction in their certification process, making it difficult to track verified products, manage participant relationships, and maintain accurate data across systems.
Technical Administrators (TAs)—third-party verifiers crucial to the certification process—faced cumbersome manual processes for data synchronization. The organization also struggled with time-consuming administrative tasks, including an arduous monthly billing process that required extensive manual intervention.
Shawn explained, "We had both a Salesforce instance up and running, primarily for just managing contacts and accounts... and then another system that managed all of our product verification datasets. Those were in two totally different systems."
The Solution
The success of this project stemmed from the collaboration between The Non-GMO Project and Idealist Consulting teams. In particular, Shawn Kemp of The Non-GMO Project came in with an extensive background in technology product development and innovation. This combined with the Idealist Consulting team’s expertise and mission-aligned approach, created an ideal partnership for tackling this complex transformation.
Shawn noted, "Everyone at Idealist has been just top notch—both skills-wise and communication, relational, technical responsiveness. It's hard to find those two together."
The team employed The Idealist Way, Idealist Consulting’s agile service delivery model that proved instrumental in maintaining project momentum while allowing for flexibility and innovation. Idealist’s proprietary project management tool, Story Navigator, was particularly effective in managing user stories, approvals, and test scripts, which Shawn noted was "fantastic... better than other project management tools that I used in the past."
Through deep discovery and collaborative development, Idealist Consulting created a custom solution precisely tailored to The Non-GMO Project's unique needs:
- System Unification: Merged verification data and participant information into a single Salesforce instance, creating a central repository for all certification-related data.
- Advanced API Integration: Developed a sophisticated API system that transformed how TAs interact with the platform. The API integration was so successful that TAs actively chose to abandon legacy methods in favor of the new system.
- Experience Cloud Portal: Implemented a comprehensive interface for TAs to manage prospects, clients, and verifications with real-time reporting capabilities. This intuitive portal provides flexibility for TAs to choose between API integration and manual data entry based on their needs and capabilities.
- Automated Billing: Created an automated system for tracking and processing verification fees, transforming what was once a full-time manual process into an efficient, automated workflow.
The Result
The transformation delivered immediate benefits while laying the groundwork for future expansion.
Immediate Impact:
- Cost savings that are anticipated to fully offset the project investment in the first two years.
- Dramatic reduction in billing processing time from a full-time task to a straightforward automated process.
- Enhanced data accuracy through real-time API integrations.
- Improved user adoption across the organization.
- Streamlined category management allowing decentralized control.
- Empowered staff with direct access to insights through Salesforce reports and dashboards.
"My philosophy for Information Systems is not gatekeeping, not to hold it, not to control it all, but actually to open it up and give people as much power as they need and can handle within the information system, to be able to do what they need without having to wait for somebody else to do it." - Shawn Kemp
Future-Ready Foundation:
The new system enables The Non-GMO Project to expand its focus from GMO verification to a broader range of food integrity initiatives. Their vision includes tracking various certifications while also exploring new areas such as nutrient density and responsible packaging.
"We're in the process of regenerating the Non-GMO Project... So a lot of this was setting us up for a technical architecture and infrastructure for information that could expand beyond a non-GMO verification." - Shawn Kemp
The success of this project has led to an ongoing partnership through Idealist Consulting's managed services offering, ensuring continuity of expertise as The Non-GMO Project continues to grow and evolve. The combination of dedicated project team members who deeply understand the system's architecture and The Non-GMO Project's mission creates an ideal foundation for future innovations.
The partnership between Idealist Consulting and The Non-GMO Project demonstrates how thoughtful digital transformation can both solve immediate operational challenges and enable long-term mission expansion. As The Non-GMO Project continues to evolve and grow, their new technical foundation will support their vision of providing comprehensive food transparency and empowering informed consumer choice.
This project will pay itself back in the first two years. The amount that we save, and the amount that we pay for Salesforce, plus the cost of this project on a yearly basis, will fully be recouped in what we were paying for the old system on an annual, ongoing basis.
