Every Salesforce consultant Kuhu Saha had met so far was fluent in the software. None of them were fluent in Give Merit.
The best of those conversations still ended the same way: a proposal, six figures, six months, built around what the software could do. Which is how most Salesforce consulting for nonprofits works. It made sense on paper. She said no anyway.
“I don’t want to build a Ferrari that nobody can drive.”
What she needed to know was whether there was an alternative. She wondered if what she needed was something more individualized. Something more holistic.
Then she talked to Matt, founder of Ascendably.
The first real conversation wasn’t about fields or workflows at all. It was Matt, and Rachel Mazzaro, Give Merit’s Program Success lead, sitting down to map out what the organization actually does.
“The process that I loved the most was when we were first mapping out what we do with Matt, when Rachel and I were meeting with him and he was wanting to understand what we do and why we do it. I was like, oh yeah, we made the right choice.”
Not “What do you need?”
That wasn’t something Matt improvised for Give Merit. As a Salesforce strategy partner rather than a vendor, it’s where he starts every time.
“What are those recommendations? And how many align with what data we want to exist in Salesforce, especially to support ongoing fundraising? And then, the story of the impact, what’s going on?”
Software decisions get evaluated against the story an organization needs to tell, not the other way around. Give Merit didn’t need a system that could hold their data. They needed one that could hold the story of a scholarship changing a kid’s life, in a form the whole staff could stand behind.
That understanding didn’t stay in the room. For an executive director who had spent years as the only person who could explain Give Merit to an outsider, this was not a small thing:
“I think Sami and Matt and Kathy [our Ascendably Team] could talk about our work independently of us to other people. And I think they have.”
Underneath it was something Kuhu comes back to again and again: trust, and the willingness to be honest inside it.
“When Matt and I meet, we do the leader check-in. I trust Matt with a lot of information about us as an organization. And then to get a truthful, honest, genuine answer back.”
Matt has watched what that honesty does over time, even when it’s uncomfortable in the moment.
“A year later, you look back and go, oh, we had no idea it was so bad last year. Things are so much better now… That we’ve changed our mind about what last year was like.”
Organizations that lose their partner at go-live don’t just lose a working system. They lose the ability to remember what broken looked like, because nobody stayed long enough to see the digital transformation happen.
Rachel saw the structure behind that from the operational seat she held throughout the rollout:
“There was just such a clear structure of how to roll all of this out when it came to the build, when it came to go live, when it came to after go live, where support was constantly given and modeled.”
Fourteen months in, Kuhu doesn’t hedge.
“I don’t know how this would have went without Human Stack and Ascendably.”
What she ended up with isn’t a Ferrari. It’s a system her whole staff can drive.
Ascendably’s Take:
Most Salesforce implementation projects’ proposals end at go-live. The software works, the invoice is paid, and whatever happens to an organization’s trust after that is quietly someone else’s problem. We think what Kuhu was reacting to in that first meeting wasn’t a bad proposal. It was a good proposal for a relationship that was going to end. What she needed, and what we built Ascendably around providing, is a partner still in the room after go-live and still accountable to the outcome.
That commitment is rooted in The Human Stack™, Tim Lockie’s methodology for closing the gap between where an organization’s culture is and where its technology is, which we’ve adapted into our own way of running engagements day to day. It isn’t a feature you can configure into a CRM. It’s what we mean by Salesforce Managed Success, and why it looked so different from everything Kuhu had already said no to.
If your last Salesforce proposal left you wondering whether anyone was actually listening, tell us.
We’re the ones who ask annoying questions and stay for the answers.