A regional nonprofit replaced Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack with a custom system that their team can actually use.
The client was a mid-size nonprofit running donor management on Salesforce NPSP — $3,000/year, heavily customized by a consultant 4 years ago, and now impossible to maintain. We rebuilt the donor management system they needed in 8 weeks, at a cost the development pays for itself in year 1.
Salesforce NPSP that only one person understood, couldn't be modified without a consultant, and was failing their development team's basic workflow needs
The client ran a regional environmental nonprofit with a 4-person development team managing relationships with 2,400 donors, 35 foundation funders, and 12 corporate sponsors. Salesforce NPSP had been implemented 4 years ago by a Salesforce consultant at a cost of $18,000. Since the consultant left, the system had accumulated 3 broken automations, 2 reporting templates that returned incorrect data, and a campaign tracking setup that nobody could explain.
The development director ran the system because she'd been there since implementation and knew the workarounds. She was the only person who could run grant reports. When she took 2 weeks of parental leave, the team couldn't pull the quarter-end donor report for the board.
The annual Salesforce NPSP cost: $2,700. The consultant cost for the annual "maintenance check" they'd been paying: $1,800. Total: $4,500/year for a system that created dependency risk and regularly required workaround.
Custom donor management system with gift tracking, pledge management, grant reporting, and donor communication tools — built for the way the development team actually works
Stack: Next.js 14, Postgres (Neon), Drizzle ORM, Clerk, Stripe (for online donation collection), Resend, Vercel.
Donor management: Donor profiles with giving history, pledge tracking, communication log, and segmentation tags. Household giving view for family donors. Major donor portfolio assignment for development officers.
Gift processing: Manual gift entry with fund and campaign allocation. Online donation form with Stripe integration and automatic donor matching/creation. Soft credit and matching gift tracking. Recurring gift management.
Pledge management: Pledge creation with payment schedule. Reminder emails at configured intervals before pledge payment due dates. Pledge fulfillment tracking.
Grant management: Grant opportunity pipeline with foundation relationship tracking. Grant application deadlines and reporting schedules. Grant report template generation pulling the required financial and programmatic data from the system.
Reporting: Standard LYBUNT/SYBUNT reports. Donor retention rate by year. Fund allocation reports by campaign. Board giving report. All reports export to Excel.
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
Custom donor management system with gift tracking, pledge management, grant reporting, and donor communication tools — built for the way the development team actually works
Three steps, every time.
The same repeatable engagement on every project. No surprises, no mystery, no billable ambiguity.
Brief & discovery.
We send you questions, then get on a call. Output: a written scope with every step, feature, and integration listed.
Build & ship.
Fixed schedule, weekly reviews. No scope creep unless you change the scope — and if you do, we reprice it transparently.
Warranty & retainer.
30-day warranty on every launch. Most clients stay on a monthly retainer for ongoing features and maintenance.
Results
- Salesforce NPSP and consultant costs eliminated ($4,500/year saved)
- Any development team member can run all standard reports without training
- Quarter-end board reporting time: from 4 hours to 45 minutes
Questions, answered.
Yes — full data migration from Salesforce NPSP via Salesforce's data export. All donor records, gift history, pledge records, and communication history migrated to the new system.
Yes — a branded donation form with Stripe integration. Supporters can make one-time gifts or set up recurring monthly donations. Gift confirmations with tax-receipt language sent automatically via Resend.
Donor management system: from $22k. Fixed-price.
Tell Ryel about your project.
Describe what you’re building and what outcome you need. You’ll have a written, fixed-price scope within the week.