Archdiocese of Toronto
Mission: Led by Archbishop Francis Leo, the Archdiocese of Toronto is home to 1.9 million Catholics in the Greater Toronto Area and is one of the most culturally diverse dioceses in the world, with Mass celebrated in more than 30 languages each week.
Organization size: Archdiocese + 225 Parishes
Number of SylogistMission CRM users: Approx. 250
Evolved from: Raiser’s Edge 7 and Silverlight/SQL Database
Executive Summary
For over 15 years, the Archdiocese of Toronto maintained two separate and disconnected databases to house valuable information about their parishioners and constituents. For the development and gift processing teams, Raiser’s Edge was their source of truth about constituents, their connections and donations to the diocese, while the ‘Parish Tools’ solution (developed by the diocese) served to capture the close-up view of a parishioner, their offertory and connections to daily church life.
The vision of this implementation was to centralize and accelerate the donor management and fundraising operations of the Archdiocese of Toronto by bringing these two worlds together under a single roof.
Business Challenges
In order to realize their vision, the Archdiocese of Toronto had key business challenges they needed to tackle and transform their operations onto a single, unified platform:
- Siloed systems: Two different systems meant two different views of the same constituent and two different paths to process gifts. At the parish level, Parish Tools collected and processed offertory, gathered data about a parishioner’s connection to the parish, and parish focused fundraising campaigns. But it was siloed from Raiser’s Edge, which had its own view of these same individuals plus other constituents, donors, volunteers as well as diocesan fundraising campaigns. Gift processing was also conducted separately, with different payment gateways making reconciliation challenging and receipting was done at both the parish and chancery.
- Prioritizing and coordinating fundraising campaigns: Without a unified view of a donor, it was challenging to coordinate campaigns and ensure they aligned with their priorities and passions and increased the risk of donor fatigue and frustration when asked to support the many different campaigns from both the parish and Archdiocese.
- Siloed data and manual reporting: With siloed data, the Archdiocese was unable to tap into the real-time operations, which created a challenge of prodding parishes to manually share data so they could generate reports and track the efficacy and results of campaigns across the Archdiocese.
- Data migration: Each legacy database had its own schema and bringing the data into a new centralized home on the Common Data Model for Nonprofits was a significant challenge as historically data governance and consistency varied. Moreover, the CAP (campaign, appeal and package) structure which aligns with the Designation/General Ledger in SylogistMission CRM needed review and analysis before mapping could begin from both Raiser’s Edge and Parish Tools. Finally, volume was a factor as Parish Tools had millions of transactions and constituent records to migrate so mapping and validation were critical on the journey to production.
The SylogistMission CRM Solution
Centralize and accelerate the donor management and fundraising operations of the Archdiocese of Toronto by absorbing and retiring Raiser’s Edge and Parish Tools with the SylogistMission CRM system.
Unified data = a single source of truth
The data held in both Parish Tools and Raiser’s Edge was migrated to SylogistMission CRM, unlocking the ability to have a single source of truth for a constituent. Being able to see their offertory, their connections to church life, what they support and are passionate about coupled with their total gift history is a paradigm shift for the Archdiocese’s donor management and fundraising operations.
Centralized gift processing & receipting
All gift processing for both the Parish and Archdiocese occurs within SylogistMission CRM – including recurring giving via credit card and Bank ACH – as the system seamlessly integrates with Global Payments so the Archdiocese can gain cost efficiencies but also time with reconciliation reporting it saves countless hours of administration time lost in unconnected systems. And all receipting, whether for one-time gifts or consolidated receipts, is issued by the system and appended to the constituent record.
Parish gift processing
At the parish level, SylogistMission developed enhancements aimed at supporting rapid entry of gifts via gift batch for Parish Secretaries and receipting to allow the parishes greater control in managing their constituent relationships.
Connecting the dots: supporting major gifts & planned giving
SylogistMission was configured to align with the needs and aspirations of the Major Gifts and Planned Giving teams. From a fundraising CRM perspective, the amount of salient information and data points the team can gather about their donors’ personal identify and interests coupled with their faith identity translates into a deeper understanding of donors, building a stronger connections and communications to align their passions with opportunities to give to their community.
Campaign based online donation pages
Previous limitations of managing campaigns, appeals and programs for multiple parishes yet providing a single page or gateway to donate online are resolved using the fully integrated SylogistMission pages. Now online donation pages allow donors to give to their parish community and Archdiocesan programs and charities, with revenue seamlessly flowing into the system and gifts instantly acknowledged and receipted.
Mimic the make-up of the Archdiocese
The Microsoft Dynamics 365 security framework consists of Business Units, Security Roles and Teams. The combination of these is what grants users’ access to SylogistMission CRM. The Archdiocese is technically two organizations cohabiting within the same Dynamics instance; to support this so a Business Units and Teams structure was created which mimics the make-up of the organization. In combination with security roles, including one custom built for Parish Secretaries, it allows the Archdiocese to control the information which users see and what they can do with it in order to do their work.
Benefits & Result
The Archdiocese of Toronto is just beginning to reap the benefits of its transition to a unified home for its donors, fundraising and financials. The ability to have a single place for its donor management and fundraising operations and unified data gives it an unprecedented opportunity to think strategically and holistically.
SylogistMission developed a robust suite of Power BI reports which track key metrics across the Archdiocese and parishes, so they can the pulse of giving across the organization and make data-driven decisions in real-time.
As time progresses, the foundation of the project will yield further benefits as the possibilities to work more efficiently and intelligently have been laid. And future enhancements such as adding a Donor Portal using Microsoft’s Power Pages to allow donors to self-serve and update their personal information and see their giving history is now possible.
Future Prospects
As the Implementation Partner for the Archdiocese of Toronto, SylogistMission is proud to support its family of faith which is alive and at work in their community.
You can learn more about the Archdiocese of Toronto at www.archtoronto.org
