How a National Organization Scaled Outreach & Operations with Waves Managed Services

A major national nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing public health was dealing with outdated systems. They engaged Coastal to help with a self-managed Tableau Server in need of an upgrade, but as we learned about their data and IT landscape, it became clear there were deeper systemic challenges at play.

They were using Salesforce Service Cloud to power their omnichannel support center—managing donors, collecting donations, connecting volunteers to opportunities, and linking beneficiaries to tools like financial aid. In addition, they relied on an association management system (AMS) built on Salesforce to provide access to courses and resources to a network of 400,000 professional members. Data across these platforms was disconnected, leading to reliability issues, reporting challenges, and inconsistent experiences for members and constituents.

Pain points included:

• Inconsistent donation tracking made it difficult to measure fundraising performance, attribute donations to specific campaigns or interactions, and have a complete picture of donor engagement over time.
• Clunky, hard-to-navigate user interfaces created friction for members and constituents.
• Ineffective KPI tracking hindered efforts to prove Salesforce ROI.
• Poor data hygiene slowed outreach and led to inaccurate reporting.
• Limited visibility made it harder to deepen engagement across donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries.

While upgrading their Tableau Server instance addressed an immediate need for the organization, broader architecture enhancements were required to resolve the deep-rooted data issues.

The organization lacked the right expertise internally to handle this work, and the capacity to keep up with ongoing IT demands—including upgrades and backlogs.