ActionAid Brazil is a non-profit civil society organization working to advance social justice, gender equality, and poverty alleviation. The organization is a division of ActionAid International, a global federation aiming to see a just, fair and sustainable world, with work spanning women’s rights, politics and economics, land and climate, and emergencies. Founded in 1999, ActionAid Brazil partners with local communities and has reached more than 2,400 communities and 300,000 individuals throughout Brazil.
The Start of Our Journey Together
As ActionAid Brazil continued to expand its reach across the country, the organization sought to enhance its donor and donation management. ActionAid Brazil wanted a more extensive system than its existing donation platform and CRM. In addition to traditional CRM functionality, the system needed to connect with ActionAid Brazil’s payment processor, track the collection and execution of payments from donors, include functionality for payment management and processing, and allow for future customization. It also needed to connect efficiently with the organization’s beneficiary management system to receive relevant data on beneficiaries. In 2019, Vera Solutions partnered with ActionAid Brazil to implement a solution on the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack.
“The partner you choose is more important than the platform itself. The best platform with a bad partner will not work because some decisions will influence the rest of the life of the organization… For us this project wouldn’t have existed without Vera. Vera was agile, always quick to address doubts, and laid out clear steps in the implementation process.”
– Daniel Barros, Individual Giving Coordinator, ActionAid
A Central Platform for Donors, Donations, and Sponsorship
Vera Solutions designed and configured Salesforce’s Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) for ActionAid Brazil’s team to manage all data related to potential donors, current individual and institutional donors, and ActionAid staff. Now, ActionAid staff can view historical data on all meetings, calls, and notes to better understand each relationship, with the database preventing and removing duplicate contacts.
Vera configured automations on Salesforce to save time on common tasks, like canceling recurring donations without payment after six months, sending email alerts based on donor actions, and automatically assigning donors to beneficiaries — if a beneficiary hasn’t received a donation in over 180 days, the child is resubmitted in the system to wait in line for a new donor. Staff can also create campaigns on Salesforce when they need to raise more funds for beneficiaries, with the system automatically scheduling activities around campaigns, from calls to sending materials, to better engage institutional and major donors.
Vera built custom objects on Salesforce to integrate with Collect, the payments system from Trackmob, which validates donor data and processes payments in real time through a full integration with Salesforce. A separate custom object collects data from the beneficiary management system, generating a match ID between beneficiaries and donors in Salesforce, so staff can see which sponsors are connected to each child, whether the donation is active, and the full history of interaction with the beneficiary. The ActionAid team can now also create reports and dashboards to view and analyze data related to donors, donations, and communications, and to facilitate the import of financial data.
“We’ve become crazy about reports and dashboards. When you have information on your clients and donors so readily available, you can make better decisions about next steps. You can assess what’s working and not working. The possibilities around information are endless.”
– Daniel Barros, Individual Giving Coordinator, ActionAid
Benefits and What's Next
With Salesforce, ActionAid Brazil has gained a broader perspective on its donors, supporters, beneficiaries, and stakeholders, using historical data on donations and beneficiaries to better inform decision-making. The team makes decisions based on customizable reports and dashboards that produce relevant and reliable information, increasing donor and base segmentation with visualized data. By integrating Trackmob and Salesforce, ActionAid staff can view all payment information directly in Salesforce — whether by credit card, bank transfer, or automatic debit — with improved data security through encrypted payment fields. The system’s 30+ automations around opportunities and donations save countless hours; rather than manually following up whenever a beneficiary’s donation status changes, Salesforce automatically assigns a task or sends an email, ensuring funds reach the correct child without delay.
With Salesforce NPSP serving as a central database for donors, donations, and beneficiaries, staff save countless hours, resources, and headaches, empowering ActionAid Brazil in its work advancing social justice, gender equality, and poverty alleviation in Brazil’s most vulnerable communities. ActionAid Brazil continues to introduce new functionality on the platform and strives to explore future possibilities with Salesforce.
“The process is much more stable now than previously, with all information related to the donor base easily accessible.”
– Daniel Barros, Individual Giving Coordinator, ActionAid