Putting Community Service on a Grand Scale using the Salesforce Platform
Project Background
Yad Hanadiv Foundation acts in Israel on behalf of a number of Rothschild family philanthropic trusts. The Foundation seeks innovative opportunities to address the needs of Israeli society. Major projects have included the building of the Israeli Knesset and Supreme Court, establishment of the Open University, and much more.
In 2009, Yad Hanadiv initiated an evaluation process for a new grant management system that would streamline the full lifecycle of grants, from requests to payments, and would also manage organizational contacts. Previously, the foundation used a proprietary system that was both functionally limited and outdated.
Service Provider Selection & Implementation Process
Yad Hanadiv first considered the merits of using an existing platform vs. a custom built system. Opting to use an established product base, it went on to evaluate dedicated grant management systems vs. general purpose CRM platforms by Microsoft and Salesforce.com.
Following a thorough evaluation process, the foundation eventually decided to implement its new system on the Salesforce platform, due mainly to the required level of development on the platform, and the flexibility of implementing customizations.
Yad Hanadiv foundation considered proposals from several Salesforce.com’s implementation partners in Israel, and finally selected ServiceWise to lead the project. The main criteria for selecting ServiceWise were:
- Team quality & project leadership acumen
- Proven expertise in implementing on the Salesforce.com platform
- The perceived potential for productive long term collaboration
Implementing Salesforce.com has involved several aspects:
- Migrating data from a wide variety of both structured and un-structured information / databases, including Excel files, legacy system, and file system folders.
- Managing the full cycle of grant application and approval / internal approval processes and workflows.
Budget and finance monitoring on grants. - Integrating with an accounting system to synchronize budget items and payments.
- Implementing a customer portal developed in the Force.com sites fully integrated with the system.
- Projects & Issues management for internal task management.
- Fellowships & Prizes management and process workflows
- Internal admin applications
- Internal customer support for IT services.
Business Benefits
Following the implementation and continuously since then, the foundation uses a single unified system, based on the Salesforce platform, to manage all internal grant processes. The system allows Yad Hanadiv’s staff to efficiently perform the following processes:
- Manage grant lifecycles.
- Maintain rich information about each grant.
- Manage relationships with contacts and organizations.
- Manage administrative and support tasks.
- Produce reports.
In particular, the foundation found the following Salesforce features useful:
- Permission based access.
- Role-based views.
- Built in control mechanisms prevent undesired actions.
- Data change tracking.
