Case Study: Oxfam America

In fall of 2020, Oxfam America ran into a hurdle. Their innovative team was ready to transform their donor experience and internal capabilities with creativity and analytics. But their tech stack wasn’t up for the job:

• An outdated supporter database no longer aligned with staff needs or supported their vision for a modern digital experience.
• Limited data accessibility made it difficult to perform meaningful analytics and drive effective marketing.
• Lack of tool flexibility and clunky integrations forced them to rely on outside vendors for every update or improvement.

Oxfam America recognized that change was necessary. They needed donor data infrastructure they could manage and build on with the flexibility and agility to open doors to future, ongoing innovation. And they needed change without disrupting day-to-day operations and donor experience for end-of-year giving.

Oxfam America had worked extensively with Purple Otter on discrete integration projects with Salesforce. When it came time for comprehensive systems transformation, instead of selecting a new, large, expensive firm to swoop in, complete the work, and walk away, Oxfam doubled down on their proven relationship with Purple Otter.

Oxfam America needed a partner both for successful project implementation and to help nurture and grow their internal innovation capacity. Purple Otter became this partner, implementing a full Salesforce strategy while supporting and growing Oxfam’s internal product team.

Purple Otter’s team of experienced Salesforce architects began by thoroughly understanding Oxfam America’s needs, and developing a plan with their internal team that would not only address their immediate requirements but also support their long-term goals. We created a comprehensive roadmap to transition business operations to modern, agile platforms while ensuring continuity of data and operations. This involved:

• Maintaining seamless day-to-day operations
• Avoiding any prolonged system outages
• Ensuring that critical work continued without disruption

The strategy involved first building a solid foundation on Salesforce that maintained business continuity of critical functions. This included:

• A 1:1 migration of data from the old system to Salesforce, preserving equivalent functionality, but grabbing “easy” wins where possible
• Migrating fundraising operations such as major gift fundraising, direct marketing, and digital political advocacy
• Establishing a dependable, accurate financial subledger function

To ensure everything worked seamlessly together, Purple Otter developed more than 20 custom integrations across:

• Digital platforms and marketing tools
• Third-party canvassing and telemarketing vendors
• Donor prospecting and research
• Financial systems

With business operations transitioned to this new foundation, Oxfam was in position to begin introducing enhanced processes, capabilities, and digital initiatives in a well-paced, iterative manner.