Featured Case Study
Configuration, Integration, Data Conversion

About the Client

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States, with approximately 4.5 million members in more than 10,000 congregations across the 50 states and in the Caribbean region. The ELCA church-wide office is a not-for-profit organization that serves its constituents including Synods, Congregations, Clergy, Church-members, and other ELCA-affiliated organizations such as seminaries, universities, and institutions. The ELCA serves and manages its relationships with these constituents through several offices and departments employing a series of discreet processes.

Business Challenge

As with any organization, those departmental processes have been enabled over years and decades with computerized systems and databases, often in a silo’d manner with little to no cooperation between offices. This has resulted in the creation of hundreds of disparate databases and lists to meet specific departmental needs. More specifically:

  • Multiple individuals managed data manually, leading to inconsistent constituent information across departments
  • Duplication of data occurs across systems, and duplicated data may be inconsistent across systems
  • Managing relationships on a consistent basis became difficult, and constituent frustration with these issues was growing
  • Overall, processes associated with managing these relationships and the associated data became inefficient at an operational level, exacerbated by the impacts of the current economic environment

These factors greatly inhibited the ELCA’s ability to effectively manage its relationships with constituents in any consistent manner, which in turn impacted the quality of services provided to constituents, and limited ELCA’s ability to market and provide additional services. Making matters more complex, the one centralized system the ELCA did have to manage some constituent information was based on an antiquated mainframe system.

Our Approach & Benefits

ELCA set out to find the right Enterprise Constituent Management System to meet their needs. They chose Blackbaud Enterprise CRM as the foundation for this solution, and engaged Sakonent as CRM experts to work with the ELCA and Blackbaud to implement the solution.

Leveraging its CRM implementation best practices, including development leadership within its International Development Center, Sakonent led the definition of new constituent management processes, and enablement through Blackbaud’s Enterprise CRM software. This solution will enable centralized management and more efficient key processes.

Results

  • Operational processes transformation, providing for greater efficiencies and increased support and services to constituents.
  • Single, organization-wide software platform implementation for constituent management, allowing additional functionality to be built through future phases of work.
  • Ability for groups within ELCA to work seamlessly and collaboratively supporting ELCA’s constituent base.
  • A CRM system and approach that extends across all stakeholders
  • A 360-degree view of the constituent relationship activity
  • More effectively manage development of congregations and church leaders