Soapbox Engage Blog

"Massive growth" with Soapbox Engage

"Soapbox Engage has allowed us to achieve pretty massive growth," said Isaac Luria, Senior Director for Engagement, New Media and Technology.

The Groundswell Movement is a non-profit organization in New York City, sponsored by Auburn Seminary. It was founded on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by a Sikh American family that was exposed to anti-Muslim violence. As a new organization, building their supporter base was vital.

Within two months of launching Soapbox Engage, they doubled their supporter list.

"We have a list of 40,000 supporters now. Soon we'll likely be over 50,000 and could be over 100,000 by the end of the year," said Luria.

"It’s not just that we grew the database to 40,000 people. We’re gathering 25,000 - 35,000 supporters for different petition actions each month. That could be list members who recently joined or people who are brand new who are signing up for the first time."

The Groundswell Movement’s petitions utilize the unique and flexible form building tool of Soapbox Engage that submits data provided by web visitors directly to Salesforce.com. Salesforce is the world’s leading cloud-based constituent relationship management (CRM) system. An enormously customizable and powerful platform, Salesforce is available free of charge to non-profits for up to 10 user licenses through the Salesforce Foundation - and at steep discounts for licenses beyond the initial ten. Soapbox Engage allows non-profits to take full advantage of the Salesforce platform through robust online tools that connect to Salesforce in real-time.

"Soapbox Engage has really facilitated the campaigns we’re doing not only for the change we want to see but list growth as well."

In addition to the utilizing the form builder in Soapbox Engage for petition campaigns tied directly to Salesforce, the Groundswell Movement uses Soapbox Engage to process donations, manage events, and offer searchable directories of its Salesforce data to website visitors. This suite of Soapbox Engage services connects in real-time to Salesforce and can be easily updated and added to by Groundswell staff with no need to write code.

"It was nuts!"

Using Soapbox Engage and Salesforce dramatically streamlined internal business processes and increased staff efficiency. Not long after their founding last year, the Groundswell Movement quickly realized they needed to consolidate their approach to data management so they could track responses to petitions, deduplicate data, and build their supporter list without relying on multiple data sources:

"We were using Democracy In Action, Constant Contact, Raisers Edge, Network for Good; data in Outlook, in Excel, in people’s heads, it was nuts!" said Luria.

"We did a presentation to staff that demonstrated how we needed to negotiate data tracking prior to Salesforce. We had people hold up signs representing different data sources and then had a staff person use a string to demonstrate where they would need to go to send a simple donor appeal. By the end of the presentation, we had a web around the room."

Institutional buy in was critical to the success of the project: "Auburn Seminary is a two-hundred year old seminary with a history of fragmented data and databases. They really recognized the necessity of de-siloed its programs and data."

With Soapbox Engage and Salesforce, data has become democratized within the organization and flows efficiently, effectively, and accurately from website to CRM and back again.

"Now we use every part of Soapbox Engage"

In addition to addressing critical online needs for petitions, donations, and events, the Groundswell Movement uses Soapbox Engage to offer entirely new online services they hadn’t initially planned on to bolster their mission.

"We had made the decision to go with Salesforce. The question was: how were we to solve various business processes we’d need? We knew that we’d need the online donations, event management, and petition sign up forms in Soapbox Engage. We were also interested in the ability to search and display data from Salesforce on our site but we didn’t have a specific use case for it earlier."

It didn't take long for them to determine a perfect use for the tool:

"We use the search form of Salesforce data for a project called FaithSource to offer an online lookup tool to find progressive religious leader spokespeople. It is an online speaker’s bureau for reporters. Before, reporters would call Groundswell for contacts and we would wrack our brains to connect them with the right people. It's so much better when we can automate the process and allow reporters to more easily find voices to connect with that we have stored in Salesforce."

“Soapbox Engage is where we should be”

Beyond the power and flexibility of the tools, the Groundswell Movement found an affordable offering in Soapbox Engage and a trusted partner for their technology needs in PICnet:

"We chose Soapbox Engage because of the price point and because PICnet has the same ethics that we do. We really appreciate that Soapbox Engage is targeted to the nonprofit space. We’ve been most pleased with the responsiveness and seriousness of PICnet in working with us to make the product right. I feel like real partners."

"Once we made an educated comparison of all the tools out there, we knew Soapbox Engage is where we should be."

Get Soapbox Engage today!

Get where you need to be today! Choose from five plans to meet your specific needs:

Non-Profit Lite

Process donations for just $9 a month with no setup fee. Buy it today!

Non-Profit Unlimited

Process donations, manage events, build forms, and create searchable directories for a low $99 a month and a $500 setup fee. Try it!

Standard

For our fellow for profits, create up to five payment forms, 100 events, five forms and five searchable directories that all integrate with Salesforce in real time for $199 a month and a $1,000 setup fee. Try it!

Unlimited

For our fellow for profits who aren't down with limits, create as many payment forms, events, forms and searchable directories as you want - all integrating with Salesforce in real time for $299 a month and a $1,500 setup fee. Try it!

Non-Profit Soapbox CMS

Looking to replace your entire website and wish it were connected this tightly to Salesforce? Talk to us about our full Non-Profit Soapbox content management system.

Learn more about Soapbox Engage

Want a free demo of Soapbox Engage and our tools that connect with Salesforce? Sign up to attend our webinar Soapbox 101: Integrating your website with Salesforce on June 23rd from 3 - 4 pm ET. Can't make it on June 23rd? Check out our upcoming events for additional opportunities.