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Council on Foundations (COF): Momentive Success Story

"I’m very, very happy compared to what we came from. We made the right decision. It is the right system for us. I have no problem recommending it to folks. And I wish we had done this sooner."
Russ Barratt
Vice President of Technology, Council on Foundations
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When COF was initially using its legacy AMS, it proved to be a decent solution at the time. However, when the organization began to undergo significant changes, it was essential that their technology could evolve with them.  

Challenge & Solution

COF began to encounter issues with its legacy AMS, such as: 

  • Inability to access and import data without significant help from IT 
  • Inability to configure to their needs without expensive customizations 
  • Upgrades were costly and complex because customizations had to be rebuilt with each release 

Because of the pain they were experiencing, COF started to look into other solutions. They were particularly impressed with what they saw in Nimble AMS, including how their upgrades were managed, the fact that it’s 100% cloud-based, and the variety of apps available in the AppExchange. 

 

They knew that choosing a Salesforce-based AMS, like Nimble AMS, would be a significant change in direction, but one they could definitely get behind. 

 

By choosing Nimble AMS built on the Salesforce platform, they now have numerous opportunities to extend the system as Nimble AMS integrates with multiple third-party applications. 

Results

COF felt comfortable in many aspects of their relationship with Momentive. The support system was great, and Salesforce also provided help when needed. There were no responsiveness issues in terms of needing solutions to their problems, and they felt the staff was knowledgeable and invested in being helpful. Momentive is also proactive in ensuring that COF is constantly upgraded to the most up-to-date version. 

 

COF staff feel that Nimble AMS makes it very easy for them to self-support. While their organization undergoes changes and evolution, they’re able to take over administration and customization, allowing them to evolve very quickly, which is highly valuable to their entire team. 

Momentive and Nimble AMS bring an understanding of how associations work, coupled with Salesforce’s ability to be leveraged to support the initiatives of organizations (membership, event registration, committee management, or whatever the goals may be). 

In particular, COF saw significant improvement in three specific areas, including: 

  • Staff efficiency equates to cost savings: 
  • Anyone on staff can enter and update records, which is a phenomenal savings in terms of efficiency. And, they can do it on any device! 
  • COF transitioned from having a very small subset of the organization owning the system (IT, in particular) to having everyone own it. 
  • Nimble AMS is much easier for the executive team to support. In fact, they have full executive buy-in because it’s backed by the Salesforce platform. 
  • From an end-user perspective, the COF staff is writing and running their own reports, which they’ve never done before. 
  • There are much better data integrity controls in place; the chances of junk data getting into the system are significantly reduced  
  • Members are more empowered to do things like: 
  • Update their own profiles 
  • Add records to their company 
  • Manage their company’s roster 
  • Updating Data: 
  • Getting records and data into the system is so easy. They no longer need to build workarounds. 
  • The system has numerous built-in features to prevent integrity issues, making it easier for COF to bring data in and manipulate it. Previously, it had gotten to the point where they weren’t even doing that. 
  • There were times when their organization had to pay around $10,000 to bring in a large list of records; now, they can do it themselves, saving a significant amount of money. 
  • Nimble AMS integrates with most anything. 
  • The overall cost of ownership over time (annually for support, maintenance, etc.) is expected to decrease. When considering the cost of support, design and development work to add resources to support the system versus having staff use it, COF has cut their price in half. 
About the organization

The Council on Foundations (COF)

The Council on Foundations (COF), founded in 1949, is an active philanthropic network and a nonprofit leadership association of grantmaking foundations and corporations. It provides the opportunity, leadership, and tools needed by philanthropic organizations to expand, enhance, and sustain their ability to advance the common good. The Council empowers professionals in philanthropy to meet today’s toughest challenges, and advances a culture of charitable giving in the U.S. and globally. 

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