Case Study: Austin ISD raises $9M and streamlines fundraising with Salesforce for Nonprofits

Austin ISD Raises Resources for Vital School Programs

Austin Independent School District (AISD), the 36th‑largest U.S. district, needed to raise supplemental funding for social‑emotional learning, arts programs, classroom supplies and other priorities that its $1.3B budget didn’t cover. After creating an Office of Innovation and Development to centralize fundraising, the team outgrew spreadsheets and faced challenges managing grants, donor records and independent campus fundraising at scale.

AISD implemented Salesforce Sales Cloud with FormAssembly and integrated the EdBacker crowdfunding platform to centralize grant management, online applications and teacher‑led campaigns. Automated workflows, approvals and dashboards made data easy to access and stewardship more efficient; as a result the district has increased fundraising each year and raised $9 million from grants and 1,500+ donors in 2016–17.

Austin ISD

Cynthia Smith

Project Specialist III