Case Study: NextAfter scales nonprofit fundraising analytics with Google Cloud

NextAfter cuts data pipeline runs from 15 minutes to 2 with Apigee

NextAfter, a digital agency serving the nonprofit sector, faced the challenge of providing high-level, multi-channel fundraising insights for its clients while operating with a very lean, two-person data team. Their client data was trapped in silos across various CRMs, donation platforms, and ad spend sources, making it difficult to build a complete picture of donor behavior and optimize advertising efforts efficiently without a complex, multi-vendor infrastructure.

The solution was implemented using Google Cloud, specifically BigQuery and Looker. Google Cloud provided a unified platform to consolidate all data into a single source of truth. This enabled NextAfter to reduce key pipeline run times from 15 minutes to just two minutes using the Gemini Data Engineering Agent and save 1,000 hours by consolidating dashboards with Looker. The results empowered their small team to scale effectively, achieving a ~50% reduction in time to onboard new analysts and providing clients with clear visibility into ROI and donor lifetime value.

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