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Year End Donations Fund Running Water

Case Study

Salesforce Fundraising & Programs Optimization

AHS Logo

We champion the bond between pets and people through comprehensive programs that provide safety, support, and second chances.

The Challenge

For more than 150 years, Atlanta Humane Society (AHS) has supported pets and people with adoptions, field rescue, veterinary care, and community outreach programs. With complicated operations and a sophisticated fundraising program, AHS’s work relies on having dependable systems behind the scenes.

But after migrating to Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack in 2022, AHS found itself managing more than 30 disconnected systems, none of which could provide a complete view of their constituents. Donor, volunteer, and program data lived in separate silos across departments, volunteers were tracked in an aging legacy platform, and the organization lacked an established process for requesting or governing changes to their tech stack.

AHS’s donation data couldn't be trusted either. A previous vendor's migration from Raiser's Edge to Salesforce had gone wrong, leaving no consistent approach to soft credits, more than 500 undocumented rollups, and inconsistent gift entry. Reporting, donor segmentation, and email marketing all inherited those errors, making it almost impossible to make sense of donor trends or personalize communications with supporters. Not even a dedicated analytics partner could decipher their unreliable data.

Atlanta Humane Society came to CauseMic with four key questions to get their systems back on track:

  • How can we make Salesforce a reliable source of truth at the center of our fragmented tech stack?
  • How do we integrate volunteer management with Salesforce so volunteer data is accessible in the same system?
  • How can we clean up and standardize our historic donation data so reporting and segmentation can finally be trusted?
  • How do we launch new programs and sub-brands without creating a whole new set of silos?
A nonprofit volunteer holding a puppy

Our Solution

We paired a technology roadmap with a rebuild of AHS’s Salesforce instance to clean and consolidate data across fundraising, volunteer management, and program operations.

We conducted an in-depth technology assessment, interviewing stakeholders across eight departments, mapping the current and future state of AHS's systems, and building a phased roadmap that put Salesforce at the center.

We designed a three-tier technology governance model, co-leading a two-day workshop to align AHS teams behind shared operating principles.

We guided AHS through evaluation, selection, and implementation of Digital Cheetah to replace their legacy volunteer system, Volgistics.

We cleaned up AHS’s soft credits and rollups, redesigned how gift credits flow into NPSP Account Soft Credits, automated soft credit creation, and retired hundreds of undocumented rollups.

We moved the Animal Protection Unit, a spreadsheet-based cruelty investigation program, onto a custom Salesforce app with record-level security, a digital case intake form, and a statewide law enforcement database.

We launched Operation Human as a distinct sub-brand inside AHS’s Salesforce, with its own Account Engagement (Pardot) business unit.

We built a solid foundation for ongoing Salesforce support, including weekly project touchpoints for optimizing and enhancing their systems using a prioritized project backlog.

The Results

  • AHS now runs its fundraising, volunteer, and program data through one central Salesforce hub, guided by a governance model that ties new work to their strategic priorities.
  • AHS can now view its 600+ foster volunteers and 1,000+ program volunteers from Salesforce, using a nightly sync with the Digital Cheetah volunteer platform.
  • AHS can finally trust its donation data. Nearly 500,000 contacts now run on standardized Household Account Soft Credits, and the 500+ undocumented rollups that used to muddy reporting have been retired.
  • The Animal Protection Unit has traded spreadsheets for a secure, statewide system, with cruelty reports flowing directly into Salesforce as cases across all 159 Georgia counties.
  • AHS launched Operation Humane as a statewide sub-brand in March of 2026. Using their current Salesforce instance with record-level security and brand-specific rollups, AHS can now see a 360 ° view of each donor while keeping its sub-brands distinct.
  • AHS now has a standing managed services partnership with CauseMic, including a backlog of roughly 90 requests worked weekly, plus ongoing support for data quality and system enhancements. AHS has relied on CauseMic for eight major projects to-date, with more on the way.
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"CauseMic is a trusted and reliable partner. They ask really good questions and work to understand our long term goals to make sure we're selecting and building the best solution. They're also fun to work with."

AHS Nonprofit Logomark

Laine Killingsworth
Vice President of Mission Enablement

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