Case Study: YMCA of San Francisco achieves membership growth and $2M annual savings with Google Cloud Platform

YMCA of San Francisco Using data to build stronger communities

The YMCA of San Francisco, a nonprofit serving nearly 50,000 members across the Bay Area, needed better insight into community needs, membership patterns, and fundraising after finding its data fragmented across multiple systems — making reports slow, error-prone, and unreliable as it pursued a 5% annual membership growth goal. Leadership wanted a single trusted source of truth to tailor programs, improve retention, and scale impact.

Working with Analytics Pros and Google Cloud, the YMCA built a centralized data warehouse on BigQuery (with App Engine for secure data ingestion) and connected Tableau for visualization. The solution cut report build time by 50% (delivering insights twice as fast), is saving about $2 million per year in total cost of ownership, supports the 5% growth target and stronger fundraising, and provides a scalable, data-driven model other YMCAs can replicate.

YMCA of San Fracisco

James Jacobus

Director of Marketing and Communications