Success Story: Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance
Transforming Membership Management with Experience Cloud
About the Client
The Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA) is a nonprofit organization that aims to conduct collaborative research to prevent, treat, and cure pediatric rheumatic diseases. CARRA’s work towards this mission is multi-faceted. The organization provides fellows, researchers, and rheumatologists with opportunities to contribute to working groups, participate in an annual scientific meeting to share findings, and apply for intramural grants for relevant research. In addition, CARRA maintains one of the largest pediatric rheumatology databases in the world, with over 14,000 patients tracked.
Over the last five years, CARRA has been able to leverage these networks to provide over 6 million dollars in grant funding, accelerating pediatric rheumatology research across the country. As CARRA’s reach continues to expand, providing a streamlined experience for their members to register and access resources has become a top priority.
About the Challenge
“Canvas Cloud sparked the art of the possible for us.”
After separating from their previous management company in 2022, CARRA had to form a data strategy internally that provided a way to securely manage their members and dues. Member information lived in a SQL database that CARRA staff had limited access to, leading staff to create and maintain over 600 individual smartsheets internally for their own tracking lists across 16 levels of membership. As CARRA planned their new member management system, transparency and ease of access were top priorities.
CARRA first transitioned into Salesforce with Nonprofit Success Pack in 2022, manually creating Membership Opportunities to manage their database of professionals. With their data now in Salesforce, CARRA wanted to make it as easy as possible for new and existing members to register and renew their membership. Members should be able to sign up and be sorted into the appropriate tier, kicking off approval processes before providing access to an authenticated portal. CARRA’s initial implementation partner recommended working with an organization skilled in creating Experience Cloud sites with robust automation to support complex self-registration.
Laying a New Foundation
Specializing in technology and business processes, Canvas Cloud is a Salesforce consulting partner committed to their dedication to client success. When CARRA entered initial discovery conversations, they didn’t know what to expect and wanted to ensure that their partner shared their vision for data integrity and transparency. Throughout the project, CARRA appreciated Canvas Cloud’s high level of communication and reliability - when Canvas Cloud set a deadline, they finished the work on time.
“Canvas Cloud did what they said they would do by the date they committed to. If issues arose, they worked until they could find a solution.”
Before diving into automation, Canvas Cloud spent time getting to know CARRA’s membership tiers and benefits. Through mapping these tiers, Canvas Cloud was able to identify ways to condense the number of member types from 16 to 6, streamlining the registration process significantly. Canvas Cloud also provided perspective on ensuring that the registration form used clear instructions on the type of information to enter to avoid collecting medical information from registrants.
Canvas Cloud built an authenticated Experience Cloud site to serve as a member portal. To sort members into the correct type and payment tier, Canvas Cloud created a screen flow that gathers demographic information and dynamically surfaces questions relevant to the individual. The flow validates the data entered, and determines the member fee, level, notifications, and payment reminders, as well as linking out to the payment processor Chargent by AppFrontier.
The transparency of data is night and day for CARRA - whereas previously they had limited access to their membership data, CARRA staff can now see every member, payment, and profile update within Salesforce, allowing them to more actively leverage their member network. CARRA is also well set up for future growth. Canvas Cloud created an entirely declarative solution using flow, which can be adjusted as CARRA’s needs change.
Sparking the Art of the Possible
Now a year after go-live, CARRA reflects on the progress they’ve made with Canvas Cloud’s support and with their newfound sense of what is possible to create in Salesforce. Shortly after the project concluded, CARRA brought on a Salesforce Administrator to extend functionality even further, adding Chatter groups, a calendar of events, and an easy way to log in to their connected research portal using single sign-on.
CARRA continues to work with Canvas Cloud for annual updates to the portal’s login flow to ensure that changes in policies and procedures are directly reflected. For CARRA, this ongoing relationship is partnership in its truest sense - helping to enable their staff to be more efficient while also laying the foundation for them to make their own enhancements. As a result of these combined efforts, CARRA’s monthly logins have grown incredibly. Within a year, monthly logins increased by 300% from 300/month to over 1,000/month. Members have more access than ever to CARRA’s directory, resources, and announcements.
Through the collaborative partnership between CARRA and Canvas Cloud, a transformative shift has taken place in how CARRA manages its membership and leverages its data. The streamlined registration process and enhanced transparency have empowered CARRA to not only serve its members better but also to envision and realize new possibilities within Salesforce.
“One of our first ‘a-ha’ moments was that we now have this member portal - how can we expand this and have a portal for everything? It was a natural progression.”
