How Charity Navigator is increasing impact through managed integrations

Last year, American householders donated an incredible $484 billion to causes near and dear to their hearts, a 4% increase from the year before. But also on the rise were charity scams, individuals posing as charities who target the generosity of others for profit.

So how can donors find and support trustworthy, effective charities that align with their passions and values? Enter: Charity Navigator.

We recently sat down with Kevin Scally, Chief Relationship Officer at Charity Navigator to learn how they’ve found a better way to connect their mission-critical data and systems with Propel Integration Partners helping to:

• Increase agility without increasing headcount
• Personalize marketing and outreach to drive greater constituent engagement
• Enable teams with real-time data and a single-source of truth

The power of data: Making impactful giving easier for all

Since 2001, Charity Navigator has empowered millions of donors by providing free access to data, tools, and resources to guide philanthropic decision-making. With nearly 200,000 charities rated, they help unveil the trustworthiness and effectiveness of a charity’s programs, informing donors of not just where their dollars are going but what their dollars are doing.

“We help more than 11M donors make informed decisions about their giving each year,” said Kevin Scally, Chief Relationship Officer at Charity Navigator. “That equates to over 200K charities rated and $185M in donations raised for thousands of organizations making a difference.”

However, driving this level of impact hasn’t always been easy. Up until recently, Charity Navigator's small but mighty team were being weighed down by:

• Manual, complex data processing: With multiple data sources and siloed systems, the Charity Navigator team were having to manually export and import data from one system to another. For Kevin and his team, this was a time consuming and cumbersome task that required multiple team members daily.
• Limited visibility and reporting: Without a single source of truth and no access to real-time data, analytics, or visualizations, it was difficult for Charity Navigator to make truly data-driven decisions.
• Lack of internal resources: As a nonprofit organization themselves, Charity Navigator had limited internal IT and technology resources. They also didn’t have the in-house Salesforce expertise to create and maintain an integration between their database and Salesforce org.

Building a customized solution with Propel Integration Partners

Looking to provide a seamless constituent experience and create a single source of truth for constituent and donor data, Charity Navigator connected with Propel Integration Partners to help build and manage their integration solution.

 “We were looking for a scalable solution that wouldn’t require any extra headcount.”

Unlike traditional iPaaS integration solutions, Propel Integration Partners provides both the initial integration development and ongoing managed integration support:

1. ‍Integration technology: Utilizing the Propel Integration Platform, the Propel team integrated charity metadata, ratings, constituent, and gift data between Charity Navigator’s centralized database and their new Salesforce Org. The solution also encompasses the gift data provided by Charity Navigator’s caging provider, creating a single-source of truth.‍
2. Expert support: As part of a fully managed integration solution, the Charity Navigator team also receives ongoing support, troubleshooting, and optimization—freeing up precious resources to focus on their mission, rather than data and integration complexity.

“Since working with Propel, we’ve been able to better enable our team to spend less time managing data, and more time focusing on impactful giving,” said Kevin.

Connected systems, enabled teams, happy constituents

“Today, we’ve got the data we need at our fingertips. Our team is empowered to do their own outreach at scale, driving donations and helping increase our overall impact.”

Equipped with their new integration solution and backed by a team of integration experts, Charity Navigator are poised and ready to scale through:

• Increased agility through new reporting and analytics capabilities
• Improved depth of charity ratings by collating data across their Impact & Results, Accountability & Finance, Culture & Community, and Leadership & Adaptability beacons
• Personalized marketing and outreach, driving greater constituent engagement
• Streamlined constituent experience by enabling support teams with real-time data and a single source of truth
• Enabled teams to find the information they need, when they need it without support from IT and technical teams

“A task that once took us weeks (and multiple teams) to complete, we can now do instantly," said Kevin. "The whole team is enabled with access to real-time data.”

“What we were looking for was more than just a technology solution. We wanted a real partnership that came with ongoing support, collaboration, and trust. And that’s what we get with Propel. They’re just good people, helping a good cause make a great impact.”