Case Study: College Forward achieves higher graduation rates and targeted student support with Salesforce for Nonprofits

Driving graduation rates higher with Artificial Intelligence

College Forward is a Texas-based nonprofit that helps economically disadvantaged students get to and through college. As the organization grew to serve over 12,000 students, it struggled with fragmented data across dozens of spreadsheets and needed a scalable, user-friendly system to track up to 1,000 data points per student and manage grants and reporting efficiently.

By moving to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (Sales Cloud + Nonprofit Success Pack) and using Einstein Prediction Builder, College Forward automated reporting, created dropout-risk scores that combine structured data and counselor notes via natural language processing, and built Process Builder workflows to flag and route high-risk cases. The platform accelerated insights and action for counselors, saved thousands of data-entry hours, and produced a sharable CoPilot app on the AppExchange now used by 40 organizations serving 240,000 students.

College Forward

Austin Buchan

Chief Executive Officer