VRP Consulting wins 2023 Salesforce Partner Innovation Award

We’re thrilled to announce that VRP Consulting is the winner of a 2023 Salesforce^® Partner Innovation Award. How? Spoiler alert: we helped Ukrainian Red Cross Society (URCS) raise $22M in individual giving in one year!

We’ll give you all the details right here. Read on. 

Acclaimed expertise in Salesforce solutions and impact

This latest win is our third Salesforce Partner Innovation Award in four years, after winning in 2020 for our work with Rolls-Royce and again in 2022 for our work with Noise Solution, a pioneering third sector organization. We’re proud to say that innovation is at the heart of our reputation across the Salesforce ecosystem. 

This time, VRP Consulting won the 2023 Salesforce Partner Innovation Award in the Nonprofit category. It’s thanks to our work supporting Ukrainian Red Cross Society with their challenge: taking donations from anywhere in the world, in any currency, from the start of the war in Ukraine. 

Helping a very worthy cause at a time of crisis

URCS had received a huge surge in global, multi-currency donations their existing systems weren’t built to handle. The scale of the crisis meant staff were unable to manage the volumes, effectively track donations, match them to outcomes and provide engaging follow-up journeys for their donors. They engaged VRP to get the scalable, secure solution they needed – as soon as possible.

VRP’s experts re-engineered the URCS Nonprofit Cloud and integrated a new payment processing solution. Our team also delivered a new Marketing Cloud implementation and configured automated follow-up notification and engagement campaigns. All work was done pro bono, as part of VRP’s Pledge 1% commitment, and completed within only five weeks. We’re incredibly glad we were able to help URCS during those crucial early days and you can read more about it in the full case study.

Ongoing progress and support 

Since the initial project, VRP has also assisted URCS in transforming their corporate fundraising efforts. As well as donations from individuals, URCS had also been receiving huge numbers of donations from organizations, often in very large sums, and had been finding it hard to keep up with them all and make the most of them. 

VRP created and implemented a Marketing Cloud-based solution from scratch: a form that pushes donors requests to Corporate Fundraising Application in Salesforce. This would allow them to collect, track and manage data on corporate donors and prospects, make it easier for URCS to stay on top of their corporate donations and perform follow-up activities. 

VRP and URCS: moving ahead together

Going forward, URCS has also engaged VRP Consulting for two upcoming projects. The first is to implement CRM Analytics to help them better visualize, analyze and understand their fundraising activities across different marketing campaigns. 

The second project is to deliver a completely new online donation center for individual donors, replacing their current iRaiser-based web page. It will be the first milestone on the way to a potentially huge new donor portal. 

We can’t wait to get started. We’re also looking forward to exploring whatever else we can do for Ukrainian Red Cross Society in the future.

A few words from our team and theirs

We asked VRP’s Nonprofit Practice Director, Laura Croudace, to speak about the win and our work for URCS. “As someone who felt helpless when the news broke about the war in Ukraine, like so many others did, it was amazing to see VRP’s work spring into action helping the team at Ukrainian Red Cross Society bring their needs to life.” 

“I’ve spent the past 15 years working as a fundraiser, and am now helping charities with their fundraising and Salesforce needs, and I am thrilled that VRP’s work enabled URCS to raise $22M in individual giving alone! The continuing work since this milestone has enabled them to do so much with Marketing Cloud, Tableau, and much more! I’m hugely excited to see what can be achieved next to help so many people.”

Ukrainian Red Cross Society’s Dmytro Skliar, Individual Giving Fundraiser said: “The VRP team pitched in and offered assistance during the invasion’s early days. Thanks to their work, we were able to see and process information on thousands of donations from all over the world, communicate with donors, thank them for their support and send them reports.” 

“It was especially valuable that VRP did the integration in such a short time without disturbing our team, which was overloaded with work during that difficult period. They understood us immediately and delivered a perfect result. This is a well-deserved award for a partner that has proved itself innovative, dedicated and ideal to work with.”

Our work for other Red Cross National Societies worldwide

As well as URCS, we’re also helping other Red Cross National Societies elsewhere in the world. In the last three years VRP has implemented Salesforce for six national societies. 

This is part of a strategic program of work supported by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFCR) and Swiss Red Cross (SRC) delivering phased solutions for fundraising, donor experience and marketing automation. A core aim of this work is to quickly release the benefits of Salesforce technology and enhance impact as much as possible. 

Thankful for the award, an exceptional client and our talented team

All of us at VRP Consulting want to give our thanks to Salesforce.org for their support for our Nonprofit Practice. As always, their partnership means so much to VRP and enables us to provide amazing solutions to our customers. We also want to take this opportunity to thank the Ukrainian Red Cross. 

We’re sending a huge thank-you to URCS for trusting us to build a platform to handle all of their donations, for their team’s bravery and innovative thinking along the way, and for their belief in us that allowed us to run (not walk) with an idea and build what they needed in a matter of weeks.

We’d also like to thank the VRP team who put so much hard work and ingenuity into helping the Ukrainian Red Cross, and continue to lead the way innovating for them and every organization we work with, nonprofit or otherwise. We hope you’re as proud of this achievement as we are of you. 

If you’d like to discuss how VRP Consulting can help your own nonprofit organization or business to innovate, overcome challenges and succeed, please get in touch.

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About the Author

VRP Consulting

VRP is a global full-service Salesforce consulting, outsourcing and managed services partner, delivering across the entire Salesforce platform. As a Product Development Outsourcing (PDO) Expert (1 of 9 globally), a Salesforce.org Impact Partner, a Tableau Partner, a Mulesoft Partner and Partner Innovation Award winner in 2020, 2022 and 2023, we have the scale and expertise to deliver innovative solutions to customers of all sizes, locations and industries.