Case Study – Empowering Financial Inclusion with Salesforce at Kiva

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Background – Kiva: Fostering Financial Inclusion 

Kiva is a global non-profit organization dedicated to opening financial opportunity for all. Headquartered in the United States, Kiva’s mission is to expand financial access around the world to help underserved communities thrive. They do this by partnering with global micro-finance institutions and online crowdfunding to provide small loans to people all over the world. Kiva is a unique operation that marries the speed and innovation of a tech company with the ethos and advocacy of a nonprofit. This approach has enabled Kiva’s growth over the past 19 years, reaching over 5 million people with $2 billion in support.

 

Revitalizing Strategic Partnerships Processes and Beyond

Kiva has been using Salesforce for over a decade to support managing and monitoring partner organizations, strategic partnerships, customer success and the US loan program. In 2019, Kiva’s Strategic Partnerships team recognized that their evolving business processes had become misaligned with their Salesforce CRM, and changes were needed to better track and grow their revenue efforts. Kiva partnered with Shujaa Consulting to solve this immediate need, which included updating the existing platform to incorporate new stages and automation. The work enabled Kiva to see its Salesforce implementation as a showcase for the importance of agile tooling to continuously support evolving business strategies.

 

Expanding Scope and Utilizing Shujaa’s Expertise

 

 

As Kiva’s collaboration with Shujaa progressed, the organization realized a growing need for resources dedicated to Salesforce. The contract with Shujaa Consulting quickly expanded to the other business processes and teams working in Salesforce. Over time the support of Kiva’s leadership team underscored the importance of providing comprehensive Salesforce expertise to support organizational growth. Through this collaboration, Kiva has bridged the gap in its Salesforce capabilities, emphasizing the importance of the partnership with Shujaa in addressing strategic needs and fostering growth.

 

Strategic Collaboration with Shujaa: Maximizing Salesforce Capabilities

Emily Winslow, a Senior Project Manager at Kiva, is pivotal in ensuring Kiva makes the most of their Salesforce investment. As Kiva’s Salesforce product owner, Emily works with a team of super users representing the various departments that work in Salesforce and who work closely with Shujaa. This collaboration is particularly crucial given the diverse array of needs within Kiva, with each team utilizing Salesforce in different ways. Together with open dialog and training of key super users on what Salesforce is capable of, the team helped move towards an efficient and high functioning Salesforce Program with the super users. Shujaa’s diverse expertise enabled Kiva to implement both out-of-the-box solutions and custom-built features tailored to their unique requirements, ensuring Salesforce aligns seamlessly with the organization’s strategic objectives.

Outcome – Building Capacity and Ongoing Collaboration with Shujaa

Kiva’s partnership with Shujaa has helped the organization significantly improve their use of Salesforce. This included Shujaa working with the Kiva team to launch Kiva Capital in 2021, a new financial instrument for Kiva.org managed in the Salesforce platform. The ongoing collaborative approach with Shujaa has fostered a partnership characterized by mutual support, transcending the traditional client-vendor dynamic and ensuring Kiva’s continued prosperity.

This year Kiva was able to secure a headcount for an internal Salesforce Administrator, prompting Shujaa to pivot focus to address the long-term sustainability of their Salesforce Program. Emily said The openness to conversation about how both Shujaa and Kiva can be mutually supported has been a breath of fresh air in this cutthroat world. Upon reflecting on the 5-year relationship with Shujaa, Emily said It’s about making sure that we’re successful as an organization and making sure that we have the tools that we need. We’ve grown and changed a lot. We really feel like there’s a true partnership here instead of just a client-vendor relationship.