Client Overview
A heritage charity that cares for a group of historic houses, gardens, and parkland reached out to ProvidusCRM. Around 50,000 members fund much of its work through annual and monthly subscriptions, and members visit every property free of charge.
The charity had managed its members in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT for many years. However, joining, renewals, and membership cards each ran through a separate process. The membership team wanted a membership CRM that took a visitor from the admissions desk to a renewing member with far fewer manual steps.
The charity reached out to ProvidusCRM to implement Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud for them.
Their Challenge
Most new members joined at a property's admissions desk. Staff completed paper forms, which the membership team typed into Raiser's Edge several days later. So, new members waited for their cards, and some Gift Aid declarations arrived incomplete.
Renewals created a second gap. Raiser's Edge held each membership's programme, category, and expiry date. However, renewal letters, lapsed-member follow-ups, and replacement cards all ran from exported lists. As a result, the team could not see first-year renewal rates by property or by join channel.
Additionally, admissions staff had no way to check a membership at the door. Members who had renewed online sometimes arrived before their new card, and expired cards were hard to spot. Gift memberships also had to stay out of Gift Aid claims, so finance staff removed them by hand before each claim.
Solution We Delivered
Our team began with the migration from Raiser's Edge NXT. We kept every constituent ID as a legacy ID. Individuals became Person Accounts, and joint and family members were linked through Party Relationship Groups.
Each Raiser's Edge membership became a record on a custom Membership object, with its programme, category, join date, expiry date, and consecutive years. Membership transactions such as joined, renewed, upgraded, and dropped became records on a related Membership History object.
Membership gifts became Gift Transactions linked to each Membership, and Direct Debit memberships became Gift Commitments. Before sign-off, our consultants reconciled active members by category and membership income by financial year against Raiser's Edge.
We then connected FinDock to GoCardless and Stripe for Direct Debit and card payments. Existing Direct Debit instructions moved across through a Bacs bulk change, so members kept paying without signing a new mandate. FinDock also claims Gift Aid on subscriptions. Gift memberships use their own record type, which keeps their payments out of every claim.
After that, we built a joining Flow for admissions desks. Staff join visitors on a tablet, record their Gift Aid declaration, and take the first payment by card or Direct Debit. Flow then emails a digital membership card with a QR code. A custom Apex REST service also lets the charity's admissions system check each card against Salesforce. So, staff see a member's status as soon as the card is scanned.
Finally, we launched a member portal on Experience Cloud. Members update their details, add cardholders, upgrade their membership, and download their card. Flow sends renewal reminders before each expiry date and starts a lapsed-member follow-up when a payment fails. A dashboard also shows first-year renewal rates by property and join channel.
The Impact
- Instant Membership Cards: We replaced paper joining forms with a tablet Flow and digital cards, reducing membership data entry by 80%.
- Complete Gift Aid Declarations: We captured declarations at the point of joining, increasing Gift Aid claimed on subscriptions by 18%.
- Higher First-Year Renewals: We automated renewal reminders and lapsed-member follow-ups, increasing first-year renewal rates by 12%.
- Fewer Supporter Care Calls: We moved card requests and detail changes into a member portal, reducing membership calls by 35%.
