Kent Community Foundation
"The process has cleaned up 1000s of data records in the migration, and saved us countless hours!"
The Kent Community Foundation
Kent Community Foundation is a philanthropic organisation dedicated to connecting people who care with causes that matter in the Kent region. By managing a diverse portfolio of endowed and flow-through funds, the foundation supports a wide range of charitable activities, from community projects to individual grants.
Their unique model of personalised philanthropy allows donors to establish their own funds and actively participate in the decision-making process, ensuring that their charitable intentions are effectively met.
With a focus on efficiency and impact, the foundation continuously adapts and improves its systems, such as utilising Salesforce for enhanced grant management and donor engagement. Through these efforts, Kent Community Foundation plays a pivotal role in fostering community development and addressing local needs.
The Background
The Foundation moved to Salesforce in 2012 as part of the UKCF rollout, but in 2022, the Kent Community Foundation team decided to create their own Salesforce platform to enable flexibility to suit their own needs.
Creating A Flexible Solution To Scale.
Kent Community Foundation faces several challenges, including flexibility and autonomy. Initially, they needed help customising their system, such as having their own picklists, which hindered operational excellence.
Their objectives focused on achieving efficiency, but rapid growth in the team meant things needed to be considered carefully. Starting with just six people managing about a dozen funds, they've expanded to 18 people overseeing well over 100 funds. However, continually adding team members wasn’t a sustainable option for the foundation, so they started asking various other Community Foundations for advice, and Hyphen8’s name kept coming up in conversation.
The Foundation sought a system reflecting its unique workflow, emphasising efficiency without increasing headcount. This push for flexibility and autonomy aims to streamline operations and sustain their growth while maintaining high service standards.
The Aims Of The Project
Kent Community Foundation aimed to enhance its operations by implementing Salesforce to track opportunities for the development team, promoting a unified and efficient workflow, it was crucial to have a system which was easier to use and more accessible for applicants.
In addition, automation was a key goal, helping to eliminate the reliance on spreadsheets and ensuring everyone operated on the same system. This shift is intended to save valuable, allowing the grants team to focus more on engaging with charities, visiting projects, speaking about impact, and seeing work in action.
The foundation sought to increase efficiency, foster better collaboration, and amplify its impact on the community by streamlining processes and improving data management
The Solution Team
Our solution began with a comprehensive Discovery phase. We put together a world-class team:
Steph Berry – Lead Solutions Consultant
Sophie Morrison – Solutions Consultant
Dan Croft – Senior Developer
Vai Cheung – Delivery Manager
The solution design team at Hyphen8, leveraging decades of grantmaking experience, collaborated with Kent Community Foundation to thoroughly understand and map out their existing processes. Rather than simply replicating these processes, we identified opportunities to enhance and streamline their workflows, ultimately reducing project time and costs.
The solution implemented:
Our solution for Kent Community Foundation utilised a robust tech stack, including Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, FormAssembly, and Hyphen8 accelerators.
This combination addressed the foundation's complex fund management requirements, such as handling donations from large donors and managing restricted funds for individual fundholders.
A custom solution for Gift Aid claims was implemented, along with streamlined processes for grant distribution, inter-fund transfers, and fund adjustments for admin fees or bank interest.
This system provided dynamic real-time fund balances and enabled the generation of accurate statements, ensuring efficient and transparent fund management.
Using the latest Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud as the foundation, our Solutions Consultant led the design and implementation of a flexible grant management solution.
This allowed Kent Community Foundation to eliminate cumbersome spreadsheets and manual processes, centralising all their grantmaking data into an intuitive, scalable system that promotes efficiency and growth.
The Impact
Hyphen8 has created a ripple effect on the organisation, and Sarah shared some of the impacts that the Salesforce portal has had on them.
Here are some of Sarah’s impacts:
- “I estimate about 50 spreadsheets have been replaced by reports or made possible with a report in Salesforce.”
- “We have reduced duplicate data entries in at least six processes.”
- “We now have more safeguards to catch errors.”
- “Our processes are more integrated with Salesforce functions and reports.”
- “The process has cleaned up 1000s of data records in the migration.”
- Having Salesforce has reduced the need for storing files on SharePoint”
Impact and Results
On top of these amazing impacts, as a fast-growing foundation that was managing 12 funds and is now managing over 100, the implementation by Hyphen8 has allowed the foundation to save countless hours of time. This means fund managers are now able to spend a lot more time with charities, seeing projects in action and seeing the impact the grants are having on the local community.
Sarah shared: "Working with Hyphen8 has been a transformative experience for us. Their team was transparent, always prioritising our budget constraints and needs. We moved away from clunky, outdated systems and embraced the flexibility of the Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud. This shift, complemented by Hyphen8 accelerators and FormAssembly, has centralised our grant management, improved our efficiency, and allowed us to focus more on our mission. The real-time fund balances and streamlined processes have significantly impacted how we operate. Hyphen8's expertise and communication throughout the project were exceptional, making them a fantastic partner in our journey."
