CRM Optimization (Salesforce)

Right now, our attempt at relationship management lives in Excel — but only sporadically, because a spreadsheet isn't really built for this and it's easy for it to fall out of use. When we do log it, we capture a supporter's name, contact information, notes on what was discussed, any pledges made, and any in-kind donations given. This covers everyone we need to maintain a relationship with — individual donors, grant funders, volunteers, and in-kind supporters — but because the tracking is inconsistent, we know we're losing track of follow-ups and giving history as we grow.

We want a volunteer to help us implement Salesforce so it actually does this job for us. Specifically, we're hoping for help with:

-Designing a Contacts/Accounts structure that covers all our supporter types — donors, grant funders, volunteers, and in-kind donors — in one system rather than separate lists
-Setting up a way to log interactions/conversation notes against each contact, so our team always knows the history with that person before reaching out again
-Configuring pledge and in-kind gift tracking, so commitments and non-cash donations are recorded just as reliably as cash gifts
-Migrating our existing spreadsheet data into the new structure
-Building a handful of reports that would actually be useful to us day-to-day (e.g., who's pledged but hasn't given yet, total in-kind value received, upcoming follow-ups)

Given the limited hours, our goal is to get Salesforce configured to do what our spreadsheet does today — reliably and for everyone we work with — plus enough reporting and guidance that our team can keep building on it ourselves.

The Wildflower Alliance exists to dismantle the everyday barriers families face when navigating systems with a child with a disability — through events like our inclusive Buddy Big Top Carnival and our Relational Respite series for mothers. None of that happens without the donors, grant funders, volunteers, and in-kind supporters who make it possible — and right now, the limiting factor on how well we manage those relationships is that they all live in a spreadsheet our team manually updates.

A real CRM means we stop losing track of who's pledged but hasn't given yet, who we promised a follow-up to, and what in-kind support we've already received — and start spending that recovered time on what actually grows our reach: deepening relationships with funders, recruiting volunteers like our Inclusion Captains, and reporting clearly so we can secure the resources to host more events like H.E.R. Again.

In short: every hour a Taproot volunteer spends helping us build this foundation is an hour that comes back, many times over, to the families we serve.

We've already aligned internally before applying. Our Founder/CEO, CAO, and I (COO) have discussed and agreed that Salesforce is the direction we want to take, so the volunteer won't need to spend time building internal buy-in — that's already in place.

We also already have a partial record to work with — not a completely blank slate. Our existing spreadsheet, even though it's been kept inconsistently, contains some names, contact information, conversation notes, pledges, and in-kind donation records we can draw from. This means the volunteer can spend their limited hours on system design and configuration rather than waiting on us to gather information from scratch, even though we'll need to do some cleanup of what we have along the way.

After the engagement, I will own ongoing administration of the system and train our other leadership team members on day-to-day use — so the volunteer's setup work becomes a system we actually run on, not one that sits unused.