From chaos to clarity:
UN Women digitalizes fundraising

UN Women is the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide. In 2018, UN Women’s National Committee of Finland discovered their old billing system was soon becoming obsolete. A new tool was needed, and UN Women Finland wanted to upgrade to a world-class CRM platform that would automate it’s monthly donor fundraising processes that had previously required a lot of manual work.

“We lacked a clear overall view of our monthly donor fundraising. Information was scattered here and there, and our billing system was completely out of date,” UN Women’s Fundraising Manager Henna Husso says.

Sofigate introduced UN Women Finland to Salesforce, the world’s #1 customer relationship management platform. All key information from different sources was integrated into Salesforce, from monthly donor data to billing records and payment transactions.

“We wanted to help UN Women Finland out of the trap of multiple systems and offer them an integrated view of their digital fundraising,” explains Sofigate’s Solution Architect Johannes Perret.

Finding a common language between business technology and nonprofit work

When developing a new system together, the key to success is good communication. How do you find common ground when introducing cutting-edge technology and new business processes to a global nonprofit organization?

“The key to any functioning relationship is good, honest communication. Sofigate’s team has really been able to listen to us and transform our needs into functioning IT solutions,” says Husso.

The key to building lasting IT solutions lies not in presenting the partner with the flashiest option, but finding the best fit for the needs of the organization. “Our consultants have extensive experience in delivering very complex solutions, which helped with handling the tight schedule. But with UN Women Finland, our most important skill was being able to listen,” says Perret.

Grow the core: Automation brings new focus to non-profit work

UN Women Finland’s CRM project grew from a very simple need: to serve monthly donors better. By largely automating the most time-consuming processes such as billing and user management, the organization has been able to redirect important internal resources to other work.

“In a nutshell, we are now able to provide all our donors better service through saved time – which is not easy to achieve,” says Husso.

Currently, Sofigate continues to advise UN Women Finland on how different processes can be automated further and on the additional possibilities offered by Salesforce.

“What we have discovered together is that constant development is the best way forward. Even on a tight budget, it’s possible to keep improving processes so that the customer has more resources to focus on important work,” Perret says.

“The key to any functioning relationship is good, honest communication. Sofigate’s team has really been able to listen to us and transform our needs into functioning IT solutions”

Henna Husso
Fundraising Manager, UN Women