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Customer Story

LGBTQ+ Non-Profit Automates Admin with Salesforce

COC Netherlands increases donations and improves volunteer deployment using Salesforce to enhance relationships and manage projects

Related Services
Salesforce

Industry
Non-Profit

Company
Xebia

COC Netherlands is an LGBTQ+ rights group based in the Netherlands with twenty local associations spread across the country. Founded in 1946, it is the oldest existing LGBTQ+ organization in the world. Through advocacy and organizing local activities, COC Netherlands fights for the interests of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans and intersex people.

It works for equal rights, emancipation, and social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in the Netherlands and abroad. Its broad range of activities includes providing personal aid and support groups, giving educational lessons at high schools, and finding safe, discrete meeting opportunities for young people, the elderly, asylum seekers, and transgender people who may not otherwise feel confident in meeting publicly.
Why
The organization needed efficient, centralized project and membership management to increase its impact
What
Salesforce was introduced as a central, shared space to track projects and member interactions alike
How
Data management and task automation provide greater efficiency, letting COC focus on making a difference

Standardizing and Centralizing Management

As an organization with an international scope, COC Netherlands was facing three major IT challenges:

  1. Project management, especially internationally, involves many repeated actions, which were often done manually and informally. Project plans, contracts and subsidies all needed administrating better to enable those projects to flourish.
  2. Member administration happened externally, meaning relationships with members did not reach their potential. COC Netherlands wanted to bring relationship management in-house to allow greater donor knowledge and interaction.
  3. Volunteer administration varied greatly between the twenty local offices, with a lack of uniform approach or GDPR statutory practice causing concerns. Bringing this function to a centralized module would ensure all volunteers were professionally managed.
“Salesforce saves us time and brings a far better overview than we had before. We’ve only just gone live and it’s already bearing fruit.”
COC Nederland logo
Marie Ricardo Strategic Director, COC Netherlands

A Specialist Solution for Non-Profits

COC Netherlands enlisted Xebia to identify the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that best suited those challenges. Salesforce was chosen to allow the body to manage and automate tasks from a central, high-functioning, tailorable platform.

Salesforce-native apps were then added for specific functions: Formtitan manages document signing and storage, along with online member signup that connects directly to the member database. Findock deals with finances, generating digital invoices and matching up income for accounting purposes, reliably automating financial data.

These were then combined with Salesforce's specialist non-profit package – NPSP – allowing donation and program information, including on individual donors and volunteers, to be at COC’s fingertips along with a higher-level view of how funds move from donor to program.

“Switching to Salesforce was such an exciting process for us. The expert support of Xebia meant this project was implemented smoothly and on time.”
COC Nederland logo
Marie Ricardo Strategic Director, COC Netherlands

More Automation, More Impact

COC Netherlands has new apps for international projects and local associations’ membership, both based within the central Salesforce platform.

Director Marie Ricardo describes: “Our international projects finally have structure, with digital sign-off enabling our teams to work faster in the field with more confidence. Memberships are automated from the website, meaning local associations have an up-to-date overview of members and funds at any time, while volunteer management has never been so easy.”

Reducing manual, routine actions across COC Netherlands means less admin, so more attention is paid to work that matters. Strategic insight into the international projects has been enhanced so senior management can easily assess the impact of COC’s current work, and focus on what’s next. “Switching to Salesforce was such an exciting process for us. The expert support of Xebia meant this project was implemented smoothly and on time,” concluded Ricardo.

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