New York’s Guggenheim Museum is one of four internationally renowned art museums within the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Built by architectural icon Frank Lloyd Wright and opened in 1959, the Guggenheim Museum collects, preserves, and interprets modern and contemporary art as part of the global foundation’s commitment to cultural innovation and education. The museum was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2008, and in 2019 it was inscribed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List.
Museum Migration: From Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce
Due to new realities brought on by the pandemic, the museum required an overhaul of its ticketing system, which would simultaneously act as the impetus for a broader technology overhaul. Looking to establish a suite of technology solutions reflective of the museum’s commitment to the cutting edge, IT Director Joshua Meehan and his team began evaluating tools and processes in an effort to standardize the museum’s data collection process, migrate off of Raiser’s Edge, and find a platform capable of scaling alongside the museum’s perpetual growth.
“Raiser’s Edge and the stack of technology we used to handle front-line tickets was pretty antiquated,” said Meehan. “As our team grew increasingly uncomfortable facing the limitations inherent to Raiser’s Edge, we began a deeper technology evaluation, which led us to Cloud for Good.”
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Integrating Ticketing to Provide Full Picture of Patrons
With Guggenheim and Cloud for Good aligned on technology needs and the future state vision, a transition from Raiser’s Edge to the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) served as the foundation for an integration with the museum’s Ticketure ticketing system and payment processor. By integrating Ticketure with Salesforce, Cloud for Good and Guggenheim have created a scalable, robust, and flexible system that supports the growth and scalability of the organization.
Through this integration, the Guggenheim Museum is able to see all patron’s monetary engagement with the organization from within Salesforce, including ticket admissions, donations, event tickets, and membership purchases. Ticketure then pushes this data over in near real-time into Salesforce. Based on Ticketure configuration settings, NPSP settings, and automations, the data is then parsed into the corresponding objects and records within the CRM. The Ticketure integration creates greater efficiency as data syncs back into Salesforce and more intuitive reporting. As a result, departmental silos are knocked down as the staff rallies around more reliable data.
“It became clear on many fronts that the various teams had become far too comfortable with a lot of manual work, moving data around, manipulating it outside of Raiser’s Edge just to get results for reporting. It was unsustainable and unproductive,” said Meehan. “Salesforce gives us the opportunity to deal with and rectify those previous inefficiencies.”
Standardizing Data Collection With Nonprofit Cloud
Salesforce will now help the museum make strides toward achieving a single source of truth uniting constituent data, especially as it relates to membership and donation management. Whereas the previous Raiser’s Edge technology only offered momentary glimpses into an incomplete picture of constituent profiles and preferences, Salesforce paves the way for greater insights into those profiles and preferences.
Guggenheim teams are beginning to benefit from a more reliable flow of membership transaction data structured with flags, formula fields, and critical gift processing information as data flows in. A greater ease of reporting will continue facilitating more significant information sharing across the museum, allowing staff to create deeper audience engagement and an elevated constituent experience through Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
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Building Sustainability Through Marketing Cloud
Advancement revenue data, critical to the funding of programs, activities, and the museum itself, all goes through Ticketure and flows into Salesforce through the new integration. Guggenheim and Cloud for Good implemented Marketing Cloud to optimize and execute holistic membership experiences through more reliable and actionable constituent data.
All membership data coming into the new Salesforce system is now more clearly defined, and custom-built data extensions connect CRM and Marketing Cloud data. This has led the Guggenheim staff to create several new intuitive constituent journeys.
These automated journeys will help to make life easier for the museum’s advancement teams through campaigns designed to target members up for renewal, reengage lapsed members, and attract new audiences. The campaigns reach past, current, and future members where they are, removing barriers to entry for the museum sustainers, empowering membership teams, and allowing the museum to build a consistent pipeline of patrons helping to preserve the arts.
Setting Up Continued Success with Managed Services
Guggenheim has continued to drive value post-implementation by utilizing Cloud for Good’s Managed Services. All areas of Guggenheim’s advancement team took part in Salesforce testing and training to ensure new skills and insights from Salesforce remain retained throughout the staff. Cloud for Good Managed Services also helped the museum designate “change champions” to help formalize work processes and establish best practices with the new Salesforce solutions.
“Cloud for Good Managed Services has been crucial,” said Meehan. “Change management was a constant priority, and the team was able to provide advice that helped us find the best solutions.”
An Expanding Collection
Even after standardizing data collection, streamlining processes, and moving off Raiser’s Edge and spreadsheets, Guggenheim is only getting started with Salesforce. More and more innovations will be made possible as the museum becomes increasingly optimized, trained, and forward-thinking in its use of the Salesforce platform. With each new exhibit or Salesforce solution unveiled, the Guggenheim Museum and the broader Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation become elevated, empowered, and enlightened through technology.
“Our experience working with Cloud for Good has been excellent. We had a great back-and-forth between the technical side of our project while also having a group that were trusted advisors. We talked things through and brought different people and ideas to the table, which was invaluable.”
For more information on the Guggenheim Museum, visit guggenheim.org.
