Case Study: Nellie Mae Education Foundation achieves streamlined end-to-end grants management and real-time reporting with Salesforce for Nonprofits (foundationConnect)

End to End Grants Management with Salesforce foundationConnect

The Nellie Mae Education Foundation, New England’s largest philanthropy focused exclusively on education, had distributed more than $200 million in grants since 1998 but struggled with paper-based grant workflows and limited use of its legacy MicroEdge GIFTS system. Applications were emailed, printed and passed around the office, making it hard to track status and forcing staff to spend two full days preparing board reports.

The Foundation implemented Salesforce—using Sales Cloud and foundationConnect along with Pardot, DocuSign and SpringCM—giving 34+ staff and board members digital Grantee and Reviewer Portals and organization-wide Reports and Dashboards. Grants are now managed end-to-end in Salesforce, enabling real-time budgeting and status updates, reducing board prep from two days to about an hour, streamlining communications and document workflows, and freeing staff to better support grantees.

Nellie Mae Education Foundation

Stephanie Cheney

Senior Grants Manager