Case Study: Omidyar Network

Omidyar was an early adopter of Salesforce for grantmaking—possibly one of the first—but over time, their system had become a liability. Even after Purple Otter migrated them from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning, their grantmaking process remained complex, inconsistent, and difficult to learn. Associates—new staff hired for two-year placements to manage the grantmaking process—struggled to navigate the system. By the time they became confident users, their placements were nearly over.

Mistakes were common, oversight was heavy, and processes were inefficient. While Salesforce was a powerful platform, there was a disconnect between how the system functioned and how the team actually worked. Users found it hard to navigate, unclear on where they were in a process or what to do next.

That’s where Purple Otter came in. Their task wasn’t just to refresh the interface—it was to realign the entire experience with Omidyar’s operational reality. The goal: a smarter, more intuitive system that could support a complex grantmaking model without adding friction.

Omidyar partnered with Purple Otter to rethink not just the look of Salesforce, but how the entire system supported their grantmaking. They wanted a team who would understand their process deeply and bring the possibilities forward for meaningful, big-picture process changes.

Purple Otter brought a fresh, strategic lens—diving into the underlying processes and surfacing business insights that could make both the platform and the workflow more efficient. Their role wasn’t just to redesign; it was to guide the transformation toward a smarter, more aligned solution.

Omidyar needed a partner who would reimagine the entire system—not just improve the interface. They needed someone who could align the platform with how Omidyar actually works. So, they engaged Purple Otter for a full discovery and redesign.

The goal was clear: rebuild the system to reflect the complexity of Omidyar’s grantmaking model—while giving users an intuitive sense of where they are in the process and what they need to do next.

Purple Otter’s deep discovery phase helped to map the business process, navigating Omidyar’s multi-entity model (grants from the foundation and contracts from an LLC), various deal types, and diverse due diligence pathways. What emerged was a manageable “choose-your-own-adventure” grantmaking journey that needed thoughtful design.

Working in collaboration with Omidyar, Purple Otter helped define key design principles, the most important being: the system should always show you where you are in the process. This would eliminate guesswork and reduce the need for constant oversight.

Purple Otter proposed three pathways forward:

1. Light touch: Simple layout improvements
2. Full rebuild in Nonprofit Cloud (high risk, untested)
3. Keep the existing Salesforce instance and layer Flow Orchestrator to map and guide the process

Omidyar chose option three. Purple Otter designed a custom solution using Salesforce Flow Orchestrator—a relatively new feature that allowed them to surface the right task, to the right user, at the right time.

The team built out a tightly coupled system that stitched together grant stages, responsibilities, due diligence requirements, and communications. The design work was followed by rigorous testing, validating every possible scenario to avoid failure points that could stall grants.