Case Study: AFS Intercultural Programs achieves 5x applications and streamlined staff operations with Salesforce for Nonprofits

AFS Intercultural Programs - Customer Case Study

AFS Intercultural Programs is a 70‑year‑old nonprofit that runs student exchange and global citizenship programs across 61 organizations in more than 90 countries. Despite its scale and mission, AFS faced a fragmented customer journey, ineffective marketing, low application completion and conversion rates, lengthy web forms and processing delays, and limited staff capacity to manage leads across the network.

AFS partnered with Salesforce and an implementation partner to deploy Nonprofit Cloud (Sales Cloud, Community Cloud and Pardot). The new, staggered application in Communities plus Pardot automation and Engagement Studio improved pre‑selection, personalized communications and retargeting, while Sales Cloud centralized applicant management and Chatter enabled fast staff–student engagement. In a pilot, 7,271 students started applications and 1,615 completed them (22% conversion)—nearly five times the prior volume in one‑third the time—and inquiries that once required eight people can now be managed by one; 70% of the network is now rolling out the solution.

AFS Intercultural Programs

Raquel Martinez

Customer Experience and Marketing Director