From Digital Paper to Power

Erin Wright
Apr 30
3 min read

Leveraging Nonprofit Cloud to Streamline Program and Donor Management

Teach Empower Achieve (TEA) is an organization supporting women in Detroit, Michigan by providing wrap-around services from coaching and financial support to training and certification programs with the goal of identifying and eliminating barriers to achieving employment and self-sufficiency.

The Challenge

TEA was relying on a custom-built database that wasn’t supporting the kind of reporting or visibility they needed into their participants’ progress. Critical program information was scattered across digital files with no easy way to spot trends or act on insights. Nearly everything required manual entry, analysis, or workarounds.

How We Helped

We helped them to design and implement Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud. We designed the system to make it simple to intake and update new and existing participants as well as alumni, while capturing the key services each woman received— from coaching sessions to financial aid and certification completions.

We configured participant profiles to capture key details about each individual’s household, family structure, support system, and financial situation — along with detailed monthly income and expenses — giving staff a more complete, holistic view of each participant’s circumstances and needs.

To support individualized case management, we configured tools that let TEA track services delivered, case notes, challenges, and milestones — including outcomes from surveys and self-sufficiency assessments. Making it easier to spot trends, surface needs, and understand the cumulative impact of their work.

Today, TEA has real-time visibility into which services drive employment and self-sufficiency — giving them the insight they need to double down on what works.

We also strengthened TEA’s volunteer management by creating volunteer profiles and dashboards to track engagement, availability, and assignments — giving staff an at-a-glance view of who’s involved and how they’re contributing.

And to further reduce the administrative workload, we optimized fundraising operations by leveraging Nonprofit Cloud functionality for donation entry and management. We integrated Stripe with Salesforce to automate credit card donation tracking, reducing manual data entry and ensuring more accurate records. Donation rollups and donor profiles now offer clearer visibility into giving history, donor trends, and cumulative impact — helping TEA better understand and engage their donor base.

Staff now spend less time managing spreadsheets and more time engaging with donors, volunteers, and participants.

The Impact

We feel more in control of our data and showcasing the results of our work. It’s been a game changer and we could not have done it without them.

– Donovan Neal, Executive Director, TEA

Advice to Others

If someone was about to take on a project like this, what advice would you give them?

Make sure you acquire a great sherpa. Someone who is not just technically competent but possesses the soft skills to work with you and your team.

The ODNOS Approach

With TEA, we focused on designing structure and workflows that would keep things simple but set TEA up for long-term growth and scalability as their programs and needs continue to evolve.

The result? A flexible platform that helps TEA focus on what matters most: empowering the women they serve.

This was a volunteer project that we did with TEA. At ODNOS, we believe in dedicating our time to support the communities we live in. We’re grateful for the opportunity to support TEA and to learn from the incredible work they’re doing for our community in Detroit.