Ever since Balt Leenman started helping nonprofits with their mission to make a positive impact, he was very impressed by the work of Stichting Vluchteling (Refugee Foundation) and the leadership of Mrs Tineke Ceelen. Tineke is a public figure in the Netherlands, making bold statements towards politicians and the Dutch public regarding the degrading circumstances many refugees are suffering. In 2014, the organization made the choice for iFunds. It was still early days with Salesforce for nonprofits, we were less experienced than we are now. In 2017, the NGO decided to replace their fundraising solution Engage (iFunds) and invited different vendors. g-company highlighted Salesforce, which was selected. 

Arjan Oldenkamp and Balt had a meeting with Tineke and Renske Boetje, head of internal affairs, the final step in the process to see if our values complement each other. They did! Our missions match very well.  

A threefold confirmed choice: Salesforce CRM for Fundraising and PME with AMP Impact by Vera Solutions  

• The first choice was the selection of Salesforce CRM, a solution to replace the outdated CRM by iFunds. g-company helped to select Salesforce CRM.
• The second choice: g-company as implementation partner. A consultancy firm was hired to manage an RFP, Request for Proposal. g-company was selected as an implementation partner for Fundraising. The project was delivered within budget.
• De derde keuze: Vera Solutions en g-company met de PME oplossing. Er werden twee mogelijkheden voorgesteld: één op basis van het standaard Salesforce platform, de tweede op basis van AMP Impact van Vera Solutions. De tweede werd gekozen, g-company en Vera Solutions werken samen tijdens deze implementatie.

The process

In 2018, an official RFP (Request For Proposal) was submitted. What happened? Stichting Vluchteling postponed the implementation, due to some vacancies, they hired a consulting firm to guide them and align their internal organisation. For the Salesforce implementation, a new process was initiated. Fortunately, g-company was well able to position ourselves as the preferred partner. 

The Salesforce implementation project

Generally speaking, Salesforce implementation are executed in an agile way. Usually, the customer is not aware of all best practices that come with the Salesforce platform, nor the insights and best practices of the firm that will lead the implementation. In this case, the consulting firm made a lot of choices already, and part of their selection process was to publish a list of 280 requirements. g-company was selected and collaborated in this project to deliver on time and within budget. 

A 2020 implementation

Although Stichting Vluchteling is a fundraising organization and does not execute projects themselves, they collaborate closely with partners and have to report on impact (55 projects in 28 countries, 884,808 refugees helped in 2018). Record keeping was done in spreadsheets. g-company evaluated two possible solutions. One based on vanilla Salesforce (PMNC: Project Management for Nonprofit Cloud), a g-company framework based on the best practices of 8 earlier implementations like MamaCash, Light for the World and vfonds. The alternative was AMP Impact by Vera Solutions. They have chosen AMP Impact and g-company is collaborating with Vera Solutions to implement AMP Impact in 2020. 

The living conditions of refugees are very close to our heart here at g-company. That's why we are very grateful to be a long-term partner of Stichting Vluchteling!