Case Study: Worcester Polytechnic Institute achieves major time savings and 25% online graduate enrollment growth with Salesforce for Nonprofits

WPI Brings Advancement Into 21st Century with Salesforce

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), a long-established science and engineering university, faced fragmented, outdated fundraising and CRM systems that forced staff to work in silos and manually manipulate spreadsheets. University Advancement couldn’t build a clear constituent story from transactional data, and the Academic and Corporate Engagement office lacked cloud-based CRM and marketing tools, creating inefficient processes and missed opportunities.

WPI moved to Salesforce (Sales Cloud plus Pardot, Wave Analytics, Salesforce Mobile and add‑ons like roundCorner’s Advancement Connect), unifying data and automating workflows. The change improved transparency and collaboration, saved the ACE team more than 40 hours a month on data entry, led to a 25% increase in online graduate enrollment (fall 2017) and a 4% rise in student return rate, and delivered immediate time savings for undergraduate enrollment staff.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Cheryl Cerny

Senior Director of Information Management and Research