Lighting the Way to 21st Century Fundraising

Through partnership with Sleek, ECC takes advantage of Salesforce’s capacity for automation and customization, giving their Advancement staff more time to focus on the important stuff.

Serving a Diverse Community

Seated in the shadow of Chicago, Elgin Community College has provided education and opportunity to students for over half a century. The college serves a community with diverse educational needs and evolving social dynamics. It has long been recognized as a beacon of equity and inclusivity.

The Elgin Community College Foundation and ECC’s small team of seven advancement professionals work hard to serve their constituents. They award over $280,000 in scholarships and $330,000 in grants annually to ease the financial burden of and promote the success of the region’s students, from providing open source textbooks to assisting with the cost of commuting to school.

The Quest for a Better CRM

In 2020, the ECC Foundation and the office of Institutional Advancement decided that, with the help of better technology, they could do more. They had been using Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge and a conglomerate of other systems to manage their 56,000+ donor records and process 5,000+ transactions each year. With all of their staff members using their CRM tools daily, it was time to adopt a system that could handle it all and do so in an efficient, reliable, and secure manner–the Blackbaud data breach also loomed in the back of their minds. With the support of their board, ECC was ready to modernize their Advancement fundraising system.

Elgin’s Transformation

In January 2021 ECC engaged with Sleek Consulting. Sleek’s powerful Quick Start Suites for fundraising and engagement equipped the ECC team with the tools and know-how to get the most out of the Salesforce CRM Platform.  The Quick Start Suites provided the infrastructure for extensive training, workshops and customization to ensure that their business processes were automated and efficient.  The Sleek business analyst team worked closely with ECC to align their business strategies within the Salesforce NPSP platform. The Sleek team added functionality so that CC could manage their payment processing, email marketing, event registration, volunteers and alumni all within Salesforce. All the processes are now ‘talking to each other’ rather than being spread across a discordant array of technologies.

The ECC staff was invested in their success. They quickly showed their energy and enthusiasm in their mission and took advantage of remote training and workshop sessions to make Salesforce their ultimate CRM solution. David Davin, the Executive Director of Institutional Advancement and the Elgin Community College Foundation, demonstrated exemplary leadership in guiding his team through this transformation and towards new success.  David’s fundraising and engagement strategies were essential.

ECC Takes the Lead

The Elgin Community College story proves something invaluable: with the right tools and a forward-looking attitude, transformative change can be accomplished quickly. Powerful automation and the increased efficiency of having all of their processes integrated in one system has helped ECC’s small but dedicated team find more time to focus on giving back to their community.

ECC engaged Sleek in March and went live with Salesforce in June, adding extensive configuration and automation into the system in July. This incredible accomplishment ensures that David and his team are leaders among community colleges and places them on the cutting edge of higher education advancement. Congratulations, ECC, you’re lighting the way!