How First Book Uses Classy for Salesforce to Target Donors

With a network of more than 325,000 members, and tens of thousands of supporters, First Book aims to meet their donors where they are. To do that, they need a holistic view of everyone who supports the organization, from individuals all the way to corporate partners.

As they finish their transition to Classy, First Book is also in the process of implementing their Classy for Salesforce integration. No matter where their donors are, First Book will now be able to understand, explicitly, how they interact with the organization.

Matching Donor Expectations

When First Book looks at their vast audience of donors, they see consumers. Like any modern consumer, these individuals expect certain levels of sophistication, speed, ease, and intuitiveness in their fundraising experience like they would with any other modern technology platform.

Before transitioning to Classy, First Book had begun experimenting with peer-to-peer fundraising and crowdfunding, but they had nowhere to integrate all the data they were receiving. After switching to Classy, they knew the Salesforce integration could help mitigate this issue.

Tapping Channel Partners

During the integration process, Classy remains First Book’s comprehensive online fundraising platform that delivers the user experience their donors crave. Salesforce is the other side of the equation—the master database that provides a 360-degree view of their donors.

To manage the integration process while staying on top of their day-to-day operations, First Book partnered with Coastal Cloud. Together, they’re rolling the Salesforce integration out in three phases:

• One: Sign on with Classy
• Two: Integrate Salesforce and turn off old database
• Three: Produce accurate reports to analyze campaign effectiveness

First Book is doing a crawl, walk, and run approach with Coastal Cloud so they don’t take on too much at once. All told, the process is expected to take around 9 to 12 months.

Bringing It All Together

By integrating all of their fundraising efforts, First Book is able to facilitate the reporting they need to suit their campaigns, programs, and initiatives. For example, every month they report back to their corporate partners about how much they’ve raised. Salesforce even lets them reconcile both online and offline donations.

The Classy for Salesforce integration ensures they don’t need to create reports from multiple databases, but instead access detailed reporting in a streamlined and efficient system. This also means that First Book can build a more personalized and relevant approach into their donor communications.

If a donor gives $1,000, First Book can configure the communications flow so that individual sees different page elements from someone who gives $10. Catering to donors as individuals like this, as opposed to lists, helps encourage them to be more generous.

Building a donor experience like this isn’t an easy task, but First Book can be a strong model of success to inform and inspire your own organization. To learn all about how First Book created a targeted approach that encourages more donations, read the full case study below.