About IU Health Foundation
For IU Health Foundation, philanthropy is not a department. It is the engine behind every program, every patient initiative, and every community effort that Indiana University Health makes possible.
Established in 2018 as the philanthropic arm of Indiana University Health, one of Indiana’s largest health systems, the Foundation was formed through a significant consolidation. Regional foundations that had operated independently across the state were brought together under one shared mission: to raise funds that power programs, care, and community health initiatives across the IU Health system.
“Our mission is basically to make Indiana the healthiest state it can be. Indiana ranks on the lower end of healthy among all 50 states, and we’ve been trying to raise that up.” – Jamie Thompson, Senior Philanthropy Data Operations Officer, Gift Management, IU Health Foundation
Reaching that goal requires the Foundation to identify, cultivate, and steward donors whose generosity funds everything from frontline clinical programs to community health initiatives. Doing that well requires the right technology.
The Challenge: A Database Built for Another Era
When the Foundation was formed in 2018, consolidating its various fundraising databases into Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT was the natural path forward. It held the Foundation’s data together through its early years of growth.
But healthcare was accelerating, and the platform was not keeping pace.
Reporting was the clearest pain point. The Foundation’s team was exporting data to Excel and rebuilding reports manually, working around limitations that left them without visibility into their own fundraising in real time.
“If we entered a gift, we’d have to refresh all of our reports to actually be able to see that reflected.” – Jamie Thompson, Senior Philanthropy Data Operations Officer, Gift Management, IU Health Foundation
The deeper issue was integration, or the absence of it. IU Health’s marketing team was already operating on Salesforce CRM. The Foundation’s fundraising database sat separately on Blackbaud. Two teams. Two systems. No shared view of the donors and patients, who both needed to understand.
When the Foundation ran large email campaigns to patients and community members, tracking who opened, who responded, and who opted out required a painstaking manual process of connecting information across two platforms with no common ground. The Foundation could not act on that data efficiently because it could barely see it clearly.
Leadership recognized what was coming. IU Health was planning a transition to Epic for its clinical systems, with a long-term vision of a unified record that could give the health system a complete view of every person it serves as a patient, a donor, and a community member. Staying on Blackbaud meant falling further behind that vision. It also raised compliance considerations as the Foundation planned for deeper patient-donor stewardship in the future.
The decision was made. It was time to move to Salesforce.
The Solution: Modern Fundraising, Purpose-Built
IU Health Foundation partnered with Cloud for Good, a Salesforce Summit Partner and certified B Corporation with deep expertise in nonprofit and healthcare technology, to implement Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Cumulus Fundraising, Cloud for Good’s proprietary fundraising accelerator.
The project kicked off in November 2025 and went live in June 2026.
At the core of the implementation was Nonprofit Cloud, now known as Agentforce Nonprofit, which replaced Raiser’s Edge NXT as the Foundation’s system of record. Donor relationships, gift processing, moves management, planned giving, major gifts, tributes, and inbound grants all moved onto a single, modern platform. A full data migration brought the Foundation’s giving history, including up to 40 custom attributes and media files, from Raiser’s Edge NXT into Salesforce intact.
Marketing Cloud was connected to Nonprofit Cloud through Marketing Cloud Connect, bridging the Foundation’s fundraising database with its digital communications for the first time. Two teams that had operated with different data and different languages now work from a shared view.
And woven through the entire build was Cumulus Fundraising.
More than a set of features, Cumulus Fundraising is Cloud for Good’s answer to a question every nonprofit implementation faces: how do you stand up a fundraising system that works from day one, not month six? Built specifically for organisations like IU Health Foundation, Cumulus Fundraising arrived with a ready-to-use reports package covering the reporting needs fundraising teams rely on most, including SYBUNT [Some Year But Unfortunately Not This: donors who gave at some point in history but not in the current year] and LYBUNT [Last Year But Unfortunately Not This: donors who gave last year but have not yet given this year] reports, top donor rankings, gift designation summaries, and giving level breakdowns. These went live with the system, giving the Foundation’s team immediate access to reporting they had previously struggled to produce at all.
Cumulus Fundraising also shortened the build itself. Because the installation package handled foundational matching and integration work upfront, Cloud for Good’s team was able to redirect an entire sprint toward the more complex, customized aspects of the Foundation’s needs. In a project with a demanding timeline, that efficiency made a real difference.
The Impact: Seeing the Full Picture
The Foundation went live in June 2026. The system is new, and the team is still finding its footing. But the early signals are meaningful.
“Now it’s integrated. And so now we can see and have that data and actually utilize that data and know that these people are not responding to emails. Maybe we need to take a different approach, or, yes, these people are really responding, and they want more information from us this way.” – Jamie Thompson, Senior Philanthropy Data Operations Officer, Gift Management, IU Health Foundation
Gift officers are reporting faster day-to-day workflows. Bulk updates that previously required waiting on Blackbaud now run quickly. And the Cumulus Fundraising reports package is already surfacing questions that the Foundation had not had the tools to ask before.
“I have heard the question start to be asked that will allude to the fact that maybe our priorities and strategies will shift now that we have this additional information that we can utilize.” – Jamie Thompson, Senior Philanthropy Data Operations Officer, Gift Management, IU Health Foundation
That shift in thinking, from reactive to strategic, from fragmented to unified, is exactly what the Foundation came to Salesforce to find.
The Cloud for Good Partnership: People First, Every Step
Technology implementations succeed or fail on the strength of the people behind them. For IU Health Foundation, Cloud for Good was more than a technical delivery partner.
Change management was embedded in the project from the start. Cloud for Good helped the Foundation develop a communications approach, advised on how to bring users along, and structured governance that kept leadership and future system partners informed and invested throughout.
When the Foundation’s gift officers were uncertain about how to record their actions in the new system, the team worked through the decision more than once, changed course, and changed course again. Cloud for Good stayed with them through every pivot.
“They were able to pivot back and forth with us gracefully, and we really appreciated their effort and their help on that.” – Jamie Thompson, Senior Philanthropy Data Operations Officer, Gift Management, IU Health Foundation
That patience, that willingness to redirect without frustration and keep the end user at the center of every decision, is what a people-first, end-to-end delivery model looks like in practice. Cloud for Good does not hand over a system and walk away. It stays in the room until the people using the platform feel confident in what they have and what comes next.
For IU Health Foundation, what comes next is significant. A unified donor and patient view. Smarter, more targeted outreach. A platform that can grow alongside IU Health’s larger system vision. The Foundation is built. Now the Foundation gets to use it.