How UNICEF Australia unified Raisely and Salesforce

Raisely and Salesforce are two world class products which link together perfectly. Learn how UNICEF Australia wired the two together, and see how the integration drove a range of new organisation-wide capabilities.

Ever heard of UNICEF?

If you hadn’t heard the name, you’re bound to be familiar with their work.

As a leading humanitarian and development agency, UNICEF provides children around the world with education, health care and nutrition - supporting their long-term development and building brighter futures.

To learn more about their experience with our platform, and their Raisely to Salesforce integration, we sat down with Jennifer Trigg (Community Fundraising Specialist, UNICEF Australia) and Henry Wong (Senior Salesforce Analyst Developer, UNICEF Australia).

Read on to get the scoop on Raisely’s Salesforce integration - and discover how it could help your fundraising, too!

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Why UNICEF Australia chose Raisely

In 2019 UNICEF Australia completed a review of their technical systems and processes. One (large!) component of this was to review and select a core fundraising platform.

Ultimately, after extensive review of all major systems, UNICEF Australia concluded that Raisely best met their needs in a variety of ways.

Raisely offered:

• 🙋 Support: UNICEF Australia submitted support tickets to a range of fundraising platforms and found Raisely’s support to be second to none (woohoo!).
  
  
• 🤝 Partnership: UNICEF Australia had a range of technical questions (and requests) which were quickly fulfilled by the Raisely team.
  
• 🤖 Feature Set: Given many of UNICEF Australia’s campaigns are international - and tend to attract a large volume of foreign currency donations - one key requirement was the ability for donors to transact in their local currency. Raisely supports donations in over one hundred currencies and, for example, India Covid-19 Crisis has attracted donations in 22 different currencies!
  
  
• ⏰ Timeliness: Raisely is an easy-to-use solution which does not require any coding or development skills. This low barrier to entry allows anyone at UNICEF Australia to create or administer campaigns without the need for technical resources which gives the fundraising team complete autonomy to own the supporter experience.
  
  
• 🏆 User Experience: At the end of the day the platform needs to work for those who are using it most - fundraisers and donors. UNICEF Australia found Raisely’s brand experience, ease of use, and lack of “glitches” (for want of a better word) second to none and enjoy a wonderful supporter experience to this day.
  

“Raisely’s responsiveness, attention to detail and general can-do attitude made us feel like we were part of the same team” - Jennifer Trigg, Community Fundraising Specialist, UNICEF Australia

UNICEF Australia does an excellent job at responding to crises, so we asked Jennifer Trigg for some key priorities around emergency campaigns:

• Being quick to respond is very important.

When there’s a crisis, people jump onto Google and want to get behind something with legitimacy. If you’re not already there, establishing and growing momentum, many people will choose another cause that is.

• Using the right tools is also critical.

The last thing you want is to create barriers for new fundraisers to start fundraising or for donors to donate. Raisely has an elegant solution to set up effective fundraising pages, offer various payment options and make our supporters’ lives overall easier.

UNICEF Australia’s campaign for India’s COVID-19 Crisis is a good example of both.

It was launched within hours, which meant UNICEF Australia were able to quickly build organic momentum off the back of donors and fundraisers, which ultimately fostered corporate relationships with the likes of Cricket Australia.

That campaign has now gone on to raise in excess of $500,000.

“That type of rapid response would be very difficult to achieve without Raisely - because it’s so easy to use, anyone in the team can launch a campaign right then and there” - Jennifer Trigg, Community Fundraising Specialist, UNICEF Australia

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Life before the Raisely to Salesforce integration

Before the integration, UNICEF’s process of pulling information out of Raisely and into Salesforce involved:

• Data Export: data was manually exported out of Raisely
• Data Transformation: data was then transformed in Excel so the format would be compatible with upload into Salesforce
• Data Import: data was then imported into Salesforce
• Review: the outcome was reviewed at multiple stages, ensuring (as much as possible) that data would import successfully and not cause any errors
  

This was done multiple times per week and - while of critical importance - was very time consuming.

There was also a risk that because the process was manual, there was a chance something might import incorrectly. If this was the case, hundreds of records would need to be reviewed and fixed, and - due to marketing automation being connected - incorrect communications and other business processes could accidentally be triggered.

“Keeping Salesforce up to date used to be a real challenge. Having implemented the Raisely to Salesforce integration, everything is automated and it’s been one of the best technical decisions we’ve made.” - Henry Wong, Senior Salesforce Analyst Developer, UNICEF Australia

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Implementing the Raisely to Salesforce integration

The Raisely to Salesforce integration is enabled through Raisely and Salesforce Partner MoveData who have established a turnkey offering which pushes real time information from Raisely APIs (i.e. campaigns, donations, fundraisers etc) into Salesforce.

Outside of the quality of the integration itself, some of the key determining factors for UNICEF Australia were that it:

• Works Immediately: The integration works out of the box with Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack, which means Nonprofits can get things up and running with just a few clicks.
  
  
• Ability to Customise: The integration is configurable using Lightning Flows, so it can be tailored to do just about anything without the need to engage a seasoned Salesforce developer.
  
• Offers Great Support: It’s always handy to have high quality technical support when implementing a new tool, and UNICEF Australia continue to find MoveData’s support both timely and comprehensive.
  
  
• Solves Ongoing Maintenance: Hosting, Uptime and incorporation of New Features are handled by Raisely and MoveData - meaning UNICEF Australia doesn’t need to worry about ongoing maintenance.
  

“There are lots of ways to get information into Salesforce - but the approach Raisely and MoveData have taken means their integration is maintainable, supportable, scalable, and definitely one of the better solutions I’ve come across. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to open the integration up, and that is a massive testament to the quality of the product.” - Henry Wong, Senior Salesforce Analyst Developer, UNICEF Australia

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UNICEF Australia now enjoy a range of new capabilities

With data entry now completely solved, UNICEF Australia enjoy many other positives that come with the move.

Now, they have:

• Quality Assurance: the integration runs automatically, in real time, according to a programmatically defined set of rules - which provides great peace of mind.
  
  
• Time Savings: with manual data entry a thing of the past, the integration unlocked a significant amount of time for UNICEF Australia. From fundraising to supporter relations, finance and data management, our team can now do much more important and rewarding things with their time.
  
  
• Marketing Automation: the Raisely to Salesforce integration allowed UNICEF to get Donor AND Fundraiser information into Salesforce. This enabled UNICEF to automatically communicate with all their supporters because Salesforce was now a single source of truth.
  
• Timeliness of Information: prior to the Raisely to Salesforce integration (and still with other platforms used which are not integrated) data could be weeks or months out of date. Now every last piece of information is coming across in real time.
  

For Jennifer Trigg, the Raisely/Salesforce/Movedata union provided ideal solutions:

• “From a marketing perspective, we can get users into our marketing journeys as quickly as possible. This helps compel people to perform their next action, like making a second gift or becoming a Global Parent.
  
  
• From a reporting and finance perspective, this union is a game-changer. We can now reconcile in real-time, report in real-time, and then be agile in the actions we’re taking. This was a huge win in terms of our ability to make informed decisions and communicate accurately, both internally and externally.
  
  
• And for the supporter relations team, when people email or call us with questions, we can jump into Salesforce, see all the activity that a person has performed, and be empowered to deliver timely, accurate and amazing customer service.

Simple solutions for better results

At Raisely we’re all about integrating with best-in-class marketing tools, analytics and tracking services without needing to touch code. Absolute simplicity for unbeatable results.

So, when it comes to the market-leading CRM for non-profits - Salesforce - we’ve made it our business to deliver seamless integration, thanks to MoveData.

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To find out more about how we can support your Salesforce fundraising, increase your responsiveness, and deliver a user-friendly experience for donors and fundraisers alike, book your demo here.