No Salesforce Org, No Playbook. I Was in the Architecture Meetings and Built the Operating Layer That Made It Run.

The Situation

A $2.2M fundraising operation running on Kindful and Google Sheets.

The organization is a nonprofit built around providing technology access and educational programs to underserved youth. By the time I joined, the organization was managing $2.2M in annual fundraising, 1,500+ donor relationships, and a growing portfolio of school partnerships — all tracked across Kindful and a patchwork of Google Sheets.

Kindful is a capable CRM for small nonprofits. It wasn't built for the complexity the organization had grown into. There was no automation, no custom reporting layer, no way to run the kind of analysis board-level planning required. The decision to move to Salesforce was the right call. What came next was the build.

My Role

In the architecture meetings from day one. Then in the weeds building everything that made it work.

I was involved in the architecture discussions before the org existed — part of the conversations about how the data model should be structured, what objects needed to exist, how donor relationships and program data should connect. I had input on those decisions.

Once the architecture was set, I owned the operational layer. That meant building repeatable processes from scratch — no template, no documentation to follow. I built the tracking logic, the data governance standards, the Apex automations that made the system intelligent, and the reporting infrastructure that gave leadership visibility they hadn't had before.

Managing $2.2M in fundraising meant I ended up as sole Salesforce admin for the full 14-user org — spanning both sides of the organization, the program team and the development (fundraising) team, each with different workflows running through the same system.

What I Built

Process, automation, and reporting — end to end.

Across the engagement I built the full operational layer for a 14-user Salesforce org — spanning both the program and development teams — managing donor relationships, event tracking, and revenue across a $2.2M fundraising operation:

• Repeatable donor management processes — contact, account, and opportunity workflows structured from scratch and documented as the org's operational standard
• Event tracking and school partnership data architecture connecting program activity to donor and account records
• Custom Apex roll-up: a program-minutes calculator that aggregated session data across school technology partnerships, giving leadership a live view of program delivery volume
• Custom Apex: an auto-generated student ID field that populated on enrollment — no manual entry, no duplicates, consistent identity across records
• Six executive dashboards tracking pipeline health, revenue forecasts, and engagement KPIs — built specifically for board-level planning and used directly in those meetings
• Systematic data auditing process that maintained 99%+ accuracy across Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, and Campaigns throughout the engagement

The Result

A $2.2M nonprofit running on Salesforce — with the infrastructure to prove it.

The org went from Kindful and spreadsheets to a purpose-built Salesforce environment with custom automation, structured data governance, and executive reporting that board members could actually use. Fourteen users across program and development. 1,500+ donor records maintained at 99%+ accuracy. Six dashboards that made fundraising pipeline and program delivery visible in the same meeting.

It wasn't a perfect engagement — first-time builds rarely are. What I didn't have then was the documentation discipline you see in the CModel work. But the technical instinct was the same. Find the gap. Build the thing. Make it durable.