“Our new community is a single, safe place for people to get help and get involved. It’s lifted our capacity overnight and shows donors exactly where their support goes.”
Case Study: Delivering a Community Portal for a Not-for-Profit Organisation
Engagement Lead: Priyanka Gawalier
Nonprofit Cloud | Experience Cloud | Accessibility
“Build community where impact happens—give beneficiaries, volunteers and donors one secure place to engage.”
1. Overview & Objectives
A national not-for-profit supporting vulnerable communities needed a modern, mobile-ready Experience Cloud portal. Stakeholders—beneficiaries, volunteers, case workers and donors—were scattered across spreadsheets and email. The goals were to: (1) provide self-service for registrations, referrals, volunteer shifts and resources; (2) enable case & program visibility for staff and partners; (3) improve donor transparency with impact reporting; and (4) embed safeguarding, accessibility and consent throughout.
2. Delivery Approach
We delivered in three value-led waves to minimise change risk and accelerate adoption:
Discover & Co-Design: Service blueprinting for referral → assessment → support → outcomes.
Inclusive research, content design, WCAG 2.1 AA audit, safeguarding & data privacy mapping.
Build & Integrate: Experience Cloud site with persona-based workspaces. NPSP & Program
Management Module (PMM) configuration, volunteer management, consent capture, SMS/email notifications.
Identity management (SSO) and data sync to finance/grants tools.
Adopt & Scale: Train-the-trainer, governance & release playbook, feedback loops with community
champions, analytics for engagement and outcomes.
Pillars: Access, Safety, Programs, Volunteers, Insights, Operate.
Why it works: One portal becomes the single front-door—reducing admin, shortening time-to-support,
and proving impact to funders with trustworthy data.
3. Solutions Implemented
1) Experience Cloud Portal: Persona-based navigation (Beneficiary, Volunteer, Donor, Staff),
multilingual content, knowledge base, events & resource library, mobile-first pages, WCAG 2.1 AA patterns.
2) Nonprofit Cloud (NPSP/PMM): Households & affiliations, recurring donations, grants & soft credits,
program enrolments, services delivered, outcome tracking and reporting dashboards.
3) Volunteer Management: Opportunity listings, shift sign-up, attendance tracking, hour approvals,
certificates and recognition workflows.
4) Safeguarding & Consent: Intake triage, risk flags, role-based access, consent versioning,
audit trails, data minimisation and secure document uploads.
5) Automation: Flow-first processes for referrals, appointment scheduling, notifications and
case escalations; Apex used only for high-volume/complex scenarios.
6) Integrations: Payment gateway for donations, SMS provider for reminders, finance export for
reconciliation, and BI handoff to analytics (Tableau/CRM Analytics).
7) Engagement & Email: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) for nurture journeys—new
volunteer onboarding, donor thank-you series, re-engagement campaigns.
8) Governance & Run: Environment strategy, DevOps Center pipelines, content governance,
release calendar and success metrics.
4. Outcomes & Impact
• Faster access to support: 55–70% reduction in time from referral to first appointment via self-service intake.
• Volunteer engagement: 2.3× growth in active volunteers; no-show rate down 28% with automated reminders.
• Donor transparency: Real-time impact dashboards; 18% uplift in recurring donations within 90 days.
• Admin efficiency: 35–45% reduction in staff time spent on manual scheduling and email triage.
• Data quality & safeguarding: 60% fewer incomplete records; audited consent and access controls in place.
• Satisfaction: +22 point improvement in portal CSAT; mobile usage >65% within first quarter.
Next step for your organisation: Start with a 4–6 week discovery & prototype—stand up a secure intake flow, volunteer sign-up and a donor impact page. Prove value fast, then expand.