Feeding America is the largest hunger-relief nonprofit organization in the United States. Their mission is to feed America’s hungry, raise awareness about food insecurity and hunger, and ensure equitable access to nutritious food for all through a nationwide network of more than 200 member food banks, 21 statewide food bank associations, over 60,000 partner agencies, food pantries, and meal programs, by partnering with policymakers, supporters, and the communities they serve, and by engaging the country in the fight to end hunger in America. A customer of Salesforce, Feeding America has enjoyed a longtime partnership with Cloud for Good that began when they first engaged in direct response campaign support for Feeding America. When the opportunities to transform their data warehouse and grantmaking technology arose, they leaned on Cloud for Good’s technical expertise.
The Challenges
An Outdated Data Warehouse Platform with System Limitations
Feeding America was using Salesforce’s NGO Connect (NGOC) as their CRM platform alongside the roundData platform as their data warehouse. The roundData platform was an older system with existing pain points, such as system integration and data access limitations, a lack of data reliability, system performance gaps, an inflexible data architecture, and manual processes. As a result, the Feeding America team was limited by what they could do with roundData.
“It was an outdated technology,” said Lisa Nelson, Feeding America’s VP, Philanthropy Operations. “We had ‘Frankenstein workarounds’ in the old data warehouse product just because of these limitations and how much it was locked down. So we needed to have and were looking for a better, stronger product that could scale with our program and really reduce some of the manual processes.”
Direct Mail Campaign Program Risks
Feeding America’s direct mail marketing program and direct mail campaigns, campaign segmentation, and campaign management operations leveraged data from their roundData data warehouse. However, as Feeding America looked to transition away from this solution, the team identified system downtime during the transition as a risk to their direct mail program, campaigns, and campaign revenue streams. Thus, one business requirement that Feeding America imposed was not incurring any system downtime during their data warehouse migration to avoid interruptions to their direct mail campaigns and revenue streams.
“We did not want—and couldn’t—risk any disruption to our business, especially to our direct mail campaigns and program,” said Nelson. “This is where all of our reporting, analytics, campaign selects, and campaign segmentation happens. Any disruption to our campaign management is a revenue risk for us.”
A Grant System with Data Siloes and Limited Data Visibility
A lack of integration between systems, connecting data, and having a more holistic, comprehensive technology experience was a challenge that also extended to Feeding America’s Member Grants team’s grants technology platform.
The Member Grants team was using a legacy grantmaking system as their primary platform for grant applications, creation, and management of grant opportunities. However, their legacy grantmaking system was another older, inflexible system that lacked the ability to integrate with Salesforce, which the Member Grants team used for development efforts, alongside NetSuite, which Feeding America’s Finance team uses for the General Ledger. The data siloes made it difficult to have visibility across the organization, because the Member Grants team could not share information, like data and dashboards, to other Feeding America teams directly within the legacy grantmaking system. As a result, Feeding America’s staff had to manage numerous processes off-platform via emails or SharePoint in order to share information across teams and systems. However, these processes were time-consuming, risked creating duplicate data, and required manual effort to keep up to date.
In addition, there were difficulties around the legacy grantmaking system’s user experience (UX) for both external and internal users. The legacy grantmaking system was a clunky system where information was not easily accessible or at users’ fingertips. Users would have to navigate several pages deep to find the information they sought. The legacy grantmaking system’s system performance was also problematic, with slow page loading being one such issue.
Feeding America had an existing instance of Salesforce’s Sales Cloud, known as FARM (Feeding America Relationship Manager) by staff. The Member Grants team was using this Sales Cloud instance for partner engagement efforts like ongoing operational support for Salesforce, business services like customer segmentation, supply chain operations, and other initiatives that were specifically related to Feeding America’s data warehouse.
Recognizing how crucial providing positive user experiences for internal and external users on their grants portal was, Feeding America desired to transform their grants management system by moving away from the legacy grantmaking system via a migration of their data and grants management business functions into Sales Cloud. This would unite teams and create a more accessible, integrated, and efficient member grants experience that better supports Feeding America’s network members, grant-related stakeholders, and their commitment to equity and community impact.
A Holistic Approach to Salesforce
“We’re always seeking a holistic CRM experience that provides our users a full vision of all of our constituents, and the data warehouse is more of a behind-the-scenes technology that supports our CRM,” said Nelson, “We knew that we needed to move, so we saw this as an opportunity to have a more robust and improved functionality and efficiency with a platform that is well-supported and has ongoing product investment.”
The Solutions
Civis Data Warehouse Platform Synced with a Scalable Foundation
With Cloud for Good’s guidance and consultation, the Civis platform, an operational data store (ODS) running on AWS Redshift, was chosen as Feeding America’s new data warehouse solution, which they could thus leverage for direct mail marketing campaigns, data pulls and edits, data reporting with Tableau and Salesforce, downstream reporting, and downstream deliveries that included integrations. The Civis platform was chosen because it required fewer tools to manage, had a more strategic and fault-tolerant architecture for new technology, AWS Redshift being more high-performing, and the ability to recreate roundData warehouse schema via a generic campaign schema on Civis, which would require less rework in the future if Feeding America’s CRM changes.
“Cloud for Good was very creative in thinking about how we could set up a scalable data architecture in the data warehouse that we could potentially leverage,” said Nelson. For the Civis data warehouse’s infrastructure, Cloud for Good provided Feeding America architectural-level support that included building and implementing the following tools, applications, and deliverables:
- Reusable Generic Campaign Schema: To rebuild data integrations and Feeding America direct response marketing campaigns originally in NGOC and in the roundData warehouse, Cloud for Good designed and used a reusable generic campaign schema (a campaign data model without any traces of specific CRM tools) with components that would produce and inform all recurring and future direct mail campaigns. The campaign schema was also designed to be CRM-agnostic and remain unchanged regardless of the CRM platform used. In the event of any CRM changes in the future, those changes would have little to no disruption to direct mail campaigns built against the generic campaign schema. As a result, this schema helps future-proof Feeding America from future CRM shifts—addressing their requirement for a scalable system.
- roundData Schema Views: Cloud for Good recreated roundData warehouse schema in the Civis data warehouse represented as views accessing Civis’ ODS schema. This was accomplished by having the views mirror roundData’s naming conventions within Civis. These schema views were designed to serve as the source of a reporting schema Feeding America built, and would support Feeding America’s reporting schema work with Tableau. This would also reduce the level of effort by Feeding America’s reporting workstream and streamline the complexity of code refactored into Civis from roundData.
- Cloud for Good Civis API: Feeding America wanted a user interface on Salesforce to display external data, so that data stored in Civis could be viewed as if it were in Salesforce. In addition, Feeding America needed a user interface on Salesforce that would give them both the ability to view data stored in Civis on Account & Contact records related to Campaign Members and Archived Giving Data, and the ability to search and update Finder File and Kill File records stored in Civis in Salesforce. To accomplish this, Cloud for Good created and implemented an API between NGOC and Civis by leveraging Salesforce Connect, Salesforce External Objects, Civis Analytics, and Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services.
- Informatica: Informatica was implemented as an O-Data connector to view archived data stored in Civis in NGOC.
- Azure SFTP: An Azure SFTP site was made available to function as the new file sharing and delivery utility in the Civis technical landscape. It replaced the sFTP file sharing utility tool used with roundData and NGOC.
Overhauled Direct Mail Program with Cloud for Good Direct Response Services
Campaign Support
Cloud for Good’s Direct Response Services supported multiple teams at Feeding America during their migration into the Civis data warehouse, as well as support for activities related to its direct mail marketing programs, recurring campaigns, scheduled processes, and procedures and uploads.
The campaign support Cloud for Good delivered Feeding America included the following initiatives:
- Direct Mail Marketing Recurring Campaigns: Managing and producing a variety of recurring direct mail marketing campaigns for Feeding America. This included Cultivation, Acquisition and Suppression, Lapsed Donors, and Telemarketing Cultivation. This initiative also included support for campaign segmentation.
- Scheduled Processes: Maintaining ongoing management for scheduled processes pertaining to data updates in the Civis data warehouse or output file deliveries. Such processes include importing pledges and leads, data warehouse tables that summarize daily data warehouse activity, output data sanitation processes for mailing, processing account giving summaries, giving summary calculations, pulling monthly list exchange data files, soft credit acknowledgements, and General Ledger (GL) integration.
- Uploads and Ad Hoc Processes: Uploading vendor-produced files into the data warehouse, such as creating campaign member records for acquisition responders, uploading monthly prospect files (Finder Files), updating weekly suppression files (Kill Files), uploading mail codes for lapsed donors, and uploading preference updates for lapsed sustainers.
Program Management
During the migration into the Civis data warehouse platform, Cloud for Good engaged and worked in tandem with multiple Feeding America workstreams, stakeholders, and third-party vendor partners by leveraging a tactical program management approach consisting of a blend of best practice techniques tailored to Feeding America’s needs.
“When we started having conversations about the migration project, we knew we had a gap in terms of overall program management and being able to serve as a broad lens across multiple outside vendors, our internal teams, and multiple workstreams,” shared Nelson. “So at the start of the project, we worked with Cloud for Good and assigned them a role for that overall program management, which worked really well.”
Under the program management support they provided Feeding America, Cloud for Good:
- Co-created and maintained a program management plan across workstreams
- Articulated roles and responsibilities, and accountability of key project members
- Provided ongoing weekly status reports that including the management of any risks, actions, issues, and decisions
- Utilized frequent communication and necessary communication channels like email, SharePoint, and Jira
- Held weekly and bi-weekly program alignment sessions with Feeding America staff or third-party vendors and partners to align on milestones and program dependencies
This program management approach delivered value to Feeding America in the form of steadily moving their project forward, enabling Feeding America’s transformation journey to be successful, and sustaining alignment across their workstreams and partners. On the program management support they received, Nelson said, “Cloud for Good was good about communication and project management. It’s hard when you have lots of different outside vendors working on different pieces of a project, but they were able to really bring together all of those various workstreams and provide oversight but keep all the teams accountable to the various intersections of the work.”
Grants Management on Sales Cloud
For Feeding America’s grants management transformation project, Cloud for Good migrated Feeding America’s data and business functions in their legacy grantmaking system into a grantmaking solution in Salesforce enabled within their existing FARM (Sales Cloud) instance. Migrating data and business functions from the legacy grantmaking system into the Sales Cloud instance would help increase access, collaboration, and transparency for Feeding America’s grant-related information, as well as create a seamless user experience for Feeding America’s grant-seeking partners and stakeholders.
During this engagement, the business capabilities Cloud for Good enabled within Feeding America’s Sales Cloud instance were:
- Outbound Grants: Application Creation, Application Review and Scoring, Awarding and Award Management, Grant Amendments, Disbursement Management, Reporting Requirements and Reviews, Automated Emails, Funding Opportunities
- Outbound Grants Self-Service: Application Submissions, Funding Award Requirement Submissions, Grantee Self-Service Portal/Experiences
- Constituent Management: Details & Demographics, Relationships, Affiliations, Roles, Tasks, Events, Notes
- Operations: Exporting FARM (Sales Cloud) Files and Reports for Finance, Outlook Sync, Duplicate Applications Management, IT Security and Identity capabilities, IT Reports and Dashboards
In addition, Cloud for Good enabled organization-managed access for external Experience Cloud site users in the Sales Cloud instance and helped Feeding America’s Member Grants team drive change management strategies.
The Results
Transformed and Scalable Data Warehouse and Direct Response Experience
With the new Civis data warehouse, its scalable data architecture, and modern integrations between data systems, Feeding America’s entire data warehouse experience has been transformed. Staff can now easily access data and data insights from their new data warehouse and make data-driven, targeted direct mail marketing campaigns that generate revenue streams. In addition, the new data warehouse solution has resulted in a positive user and system experience:
- Data warehouse jobs in Civis running in a fraction of the time that the legacy jobs in roundData would run, with many of Civis’ high compute jobs running in less than 5% of the time the legacy jobs required in roundData
- 80% reduction in Direct Response code base, which has significantly reduced technical debt
- Streamlined and enhanced core critical processes, such as Giving Summaries, General Ledger, and Base Campaign Universes, which enable those processes to be more accurate, fault-tolerant, dynamic, efficient, and include more error handling
- Reduced storage footprint in Salesforce
- Completing the implementation and migration into Civis in time for roundData’s end-of-life date, which was a critical business requirement of the project
Enhanced Direct Mail Marketing Program and Campaign Services
The new Civis data warehouse and ongoing support from Cloud for Good’s Direct Response services have also enhanced Feeding America’s direct mail marketing program delivery and campaign performance, with some notable outcomes being:
- Improved direct mail process efficiency
- Growth in Feeding America’s mailable house files
- New, enhanced Account Giving Summary fields available through Cloud for Good Direct Response scheduled processes
- Enhanced data hygiene and enrichment processes that have improved Feeding America’s data integrity practices, duplication management, and optimized data storage
In addition, the transition from roundData into Civis did not incur any system downtime, so none of Feeding America’s direct mail marketing campaigns or associated revenue streams were interrupted.
An Integrated, Flexible, Accessible Grants Platform with Enhanced User Experiences
As a result of Cloud for Good’s engagement with Feeding America on their grants management transformation project, Feeding America now has an integrated, modern, flexible, and accessible grants platform on Sales Cloud that:
- Has a clear, user-friendly interface for all users
- Enables key linkages across functional areas
- Provides a better understanding of community impact
- Enhances strategic reporting & analytics for informed decision-making
- Supports collaboration and information sharing with partners and stakeholders
- Supports system consolidation to provide a more seamless experience
- Does not require coding by Feeding America grants managers to create grant applications and reports, thanks to Salesforce’s Form Content functionality/architecture
- Support for multi-year grants and for multiple grant report periods for the same grant opportunity
In addition, ever since the new grants platform solution was implemented:
- ~75% of Feeding America network member organizations have logged into Salesforce since the grants solution’s go-live on September 2024
- 458 Grant Applications have been submitted by network members against 29 Grant Opportunities that have been created by Feeding America since go-live
- Some of the grants managed through the new grants solution on Sales Cloud are tied to relief efforts associated with the hurricanes that impacted Florida and the southeast United States in Fall 2024
As more internal and external Feeding America users adopt Sales Cloud for grants initiatives, Sales Cloud is becoming the source of truth for grants information and information about Feeding America’s member and partner network. Consequently, with more Feeding America users overall accessing Sales Cloud, shared access and visibility on grants data across the organization has increased, thus reducing the amount of siloed data and the need for manual, time-consuming data-sharing workarounds off-platform.
A True Partnership
Nelson praised the technical expertise Cloud for Good provided during their engagement with her team, sharing, “Cloud for Good brought in a deeply technical team that really had a good solid understanding of our business, how we used our data warehouse and data, and how our data was architected. They figured out the solutions that would work for us and their team was creative in looking at ways to automate things we didn’t or couldn’t do before. On our new platform, we are now able to schedule things and automate processes, which makes our lives easier. That sounds small, but for us it’s a big deal.”
To learn more about Feeding America, visit www.feedingamerica.org.
