Cloud for Good recently hosted and moderated an in-depth webinar exploring the future of hospital foundation technology. Industry experts from Cloud for Good, Vidant Health Foundation, WealthEngine, and Salesforce explored the current state of hospital foundation development, overarching security concerns, and the quickening modernization of technology needs in the space. These experts dissected exactly why the Salesforce platform, in conjunction with partners like Cloud for Good and WealthEngine, is aptly positioned to lead the recovery and reimagining of community-based healthcare in a post-COVID world.
Below we’ll highlight some of the most impactful topics and takeaways from the webinar but be sure to view the recorded playback to take in all the insight shared.
Salesforce presents hospital foundations with a unique opportunity to build resiliency despite adversity and help reimagine how these foundations operate through technology. Coming off the year we all experienced in 2020, Sterrin Bird, Nonprofit Industry Advisor at Salesforce, believes one of the most significant areas of examination in the nonprofit sector today is healthcare and community health. “One of the greatest ways we can support individual communities big and small is in support of our healthcare system and our community health centers across the country,” Bird continued.
Bird’s contribution to the webinar follows her illuminating guest blog with Cloud for Good that detailed exactly how Salesforce helped hospitals navigate the considerable challenges presented by COVID-19. With past experience as a Major Gift Officer and Capital Campaign Director both at Duke Medicine and UCSF Health, Bird expressed that the usability and the scalability inherent to Salesforce is exactly why the platform is the right technology for hospital foundations. “The ability for frontline fundraisers to keep doing what they’re good at, which is staying in front of donors and having the right conversations at the right time, is what raises more money. The usability of the Salesforce platform to understand how individuals interact with your hospital or community clinic is paramount to making those conversations authentic and productive,” Bird elaborated.
How Vidant Health Foundation is Poised for Salesforce Success
Vidant Health Foundation recently made the move to Salesforce over from Blackbaud’s suite of products, specifically citing a lack of usability and scalability as a previous pain point that served as the catalyst for a move to Salesforce. Comprised of nine hospitals and over one hundred outpatient practices serving 1.4M residents in eastern North Carolina, Vidant’s overall vision is to become the national model for rural health and wellness by creating a premier, trusted healthcare delivery education system. The Foundation simply couldn’t be held back by technology that inhibited, rather than enable, growth and effectiveness.
Vidant’s previous Blackbaud technology solutions featured disparate, disconnected systems, challenges accessing data or providing reports in real-time, an inability to offer timely and relevant engagement to donors and prospects, as well as limitations for making enhancements readily and effectively. Through Cloud for Good’s implementation of Nonprofit Cloud and Pardot, Vidant is now in a position to utilize Salesforce as a scalable, robust, and flexible system; a system that can support short and long-term growth, standardize fundraising data, and centralize communication through a single-source of truth. Chris Smith, VP, Finance and Operations at Vidant Health Foundation remarked, “Cloud for Good really took the time to create a case for us to make the move to Salesforce,” adding that “the biggest thing that brought us to the table had been security issues, specifically the Blackbaud breach.”
How Salesforce Keeps You Safe and Nimble
Following Smith’s admission of security concerns with Blackbaud, one member of the webinar audience asked, “My donors have contacted me and asked me if my data is safe, how would I know how to answer this?” “Trust is Salesforce’s number one value,” responded Bird, “We have real-time reporting on how our platform and privacy is monitored. You can go at any time to trust.salesforce.com and monitor how our data is being managed. We are incredibly confident in our ability to deliver privacy and security in all of our products.”
Matt Thompson serves as the Strategic Account Executive at WealthEngine, a company fueling wealth-aware campaigns that empower their clients to discover their next best prospect to drive growth. He also has a long track record of working within the healthcare space, including four years working at Blackbaud, and has extensive experience with the many CRM options available today. When asked if Salesforce could do everything an audience member’s previous technology had done, Thompson responded by saying, “The short answer is yes. One of the challenges that come into play is there are CRMs that have built-in technology; to a certain extent, that can box an organization into a corner and force them to use certain tools. The value with Salesforce and the AppExchange is you have the freedom, as the foundation to choose the solution that’s going to best suit your needs.”
Ensuring a Smooth Technology Change
Salesforce technology presents a unique opportunity to hospital foundations in need of help with fundraising effectiveness and in search of the peace of mind provided through tight security. Ultimately, Salesforce helps support hospital foundations to make sure people have access to the healthcare they need, when they need it, in the communities where it is needed most. Cloud for Good is here to ensure hospital foundations can navigate their technology change to Salesforce in a smooth and efficient manner. Through change management, a deep discovery process, and a perpetually open line of communication, Cloud for Good helps foundations, like Vivant Health, create transformational value with Salesforce.
Additionally, we have created a number of different Migration Accelerators that are tried, true, and tested solutions that enable our team to pull data out of Raiser’s Edge, Luminate CRM, NGOC, and other legacy systems, and migrate them into Salesforce. We work with our clients throughout the process to ensure a smooth technology transition. As Bird remarked in the closing Q&A section of our webinar, “What I find myself saying to customers now, and what I know from my previous positions, [is] to get curious and have courage. Bringing the best and the brightest together to have those curious and courageous conversations is how we’re able to move towards making the changes necessary for us to be able to raise more money.”
Are you ready to get curious and have courage? If so, reach out to Cloud for Good to learn more about how Salesforce can help transform hospital foundation technology.
