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About the Organization

A prominent UK-based nonprofit supporting global humanitarian and development initiatives needed a better way to manage its complex donation workflows. With thousands of recurring donors and a reliance on multiple bespoke systems, the charity faced mounting challenges integrating CSV payment data into Salesforce, particularly for recurring gift reconciliation. The priority was a repeatable, auditable process to join monthly bank payment CSVs to Salesforce recurring-gift records and write updates back to multiple related Salesforce objects.

The Challenge: Fragmented Matching Logic and Heavy Maintenance

The organization’s data team managed a complex workflow for reconciling regular donor contributions. Each month, a bank-exported CSV containing standing order donations had to be:

  • Downloaded and decrypted,

  • Matched to the corresponding Recurring Donation record in Salesforce,

  • And used to update the linked pledged Opportunity as "received and thanked."

This process was highly fragmented:

  • Recurring Gift Logic Scattered Across Systems: Matching logic was split between Salesforce, a legacy integration tool, and an on-prem SQL database used as a staging layer for lookups, making changes brittle when fields, mappings, or record relationships evolved.

  • High Maintenance Overhead: The existing solution required constant management, dependency tracking, and version maintenance, diverting developer time from higher-value projects.

  • Limited Scalability: Adding or modifying flows required significant manual effort, slowing down response times for new fundraising needs.

“We were stuck in a cycle of patching workflows that were never built to scale with the volume and complexity of our donation processing,” noted the Head of Digital Systems.

The Solution: Seamless CSV-to-Salesforce Matching with Integrate.io

After reviewing multiple integration platforms, the organization selected Integrate.io for its flexibility, simplicity, and native Salesforce compatibility.

How the Pipeline Worked (Step-by-Step)

  1. Secure file pickup (SFTP)

    • The pipeline ingested encrypted bank payment CSV files directly from an SFTP location.

  2. Decrypt and prepare the data

    • Files were decrypted automatically, then standardized for downstream processing.

  3. Validate before anything touches Salesforce

    • The pipeline ran validation checks (schema/required fields/format rules) and captured errors for review.

  4. Match each payment to the right recurring gift

    • Using external IDs / reference fields from the bank CSV, the pipeline performed Salesforce lookups to find the correct Recurring Donation record.

  5. Identify the pledged Opportunity linked to that recurring gift

    • Once the recurring gift was found, the pipeline traced the relationship to the associated pledged Opportunity in Salesforce.

  6. Write back updates to Salesforce

    • The pipeline updated the pledged Opportunity with the correct payment details (and any required linkage), ensuring records stayed in sync.

  7. Idempotent reprocessing (safe retries and replays)

    • Every payment row was keyed to a unique reference so reruns wouldn’t create duplicate receipts or accidentally overwrite the wrong pledge.

  8. Orchestrated runs with monitoring

    • Pipelines ran on flexible schedules (e.g., twice daily), with automated error capture and notification options.

  9. Fully managed, no-code operations

    • Everything ran on Integrate.io’s cloud-native platform—no environment setup, version control, or backend dependencies required.

  10. EU processing for GDPR alignment

  • Processing occurred in the EU to support data residency requirements and maintain GDPR compliance.

Results: Faster Matching, Less Maintenance, and Greater Control

Before Integrate.io:

  • Manual joins and external SQL tables were required to match donations.

  • Complex environment requirements made the system fragile and difficult to maintain.

  • Building or modifying workflows often took days.

After Integrate.io:

  • Improved Workflow: Monthly reconciliation moved from a multi-day, multi-system process to a repeatable scheduled run, with exceptions isolated to a review queue instead of blocking the entire batch.

  • Matching Logic Fully Consolidated: One low-code pipeline performs all required validation, lookup, and updates.

  • 90% Reduction in Maintenance Overhead: Zero backend dependencies, no local infrastructure, and automatic version handling.

  • 10 Technical Users Enabled: A team of data professionals now manage and deploy flows via an intuitive interface.

  • Prepared for Scale: Can easily incorporate future use cases like contact enrichment, multi-channel marketing syncs, and API-based automation.

Looking Ahead: A Foundation for Agile, Donor-Centric Operations

With Integrate.io powering its core donation reconciliation process, the nonprofit is well-positioned to expand automation and insights across fundraising and engagement efforts. Future projects include syncing with marketing platforms, enriching donor profiles, and unlocking advanced analytics.

FAQs: Integrate.io and Salesforce Donation Matching

Is there an ETL tool that can join CSV payment data with Salesforce objects and write results back to multiple Salesforce objects in one flow?

Yes, Integrate.io can pull Salesforce objects for lookups, join them with a payment CSV, then write results back into Salesforce, including updates to multiple objects from the same pipeline run. It also captures row-level errors and supports safe replays so failed records can be corrected and reprocessed without duplicating updates.

What cloud ETL tools are suited for recurring gift matching logic?

Recurring gift matching (bank CSV to recurring donation to pledged opportunity) works best with a cloud ETL platform that can:

  1. Ingest and validate files from sources like SFTP

  2. Perform reliable joins and transformations at scale

  3. Run Salesforce lookups using external IDs/reference fields

  4. Execute sequenced, multi-object upserts/updates with strong error handling and replays.

Integrate.io is well-suited for this workflow, as opposed to other competitors, because it supports end-to-end file ingestion, Salesforce bi-directional sync, and controlled write-backs across related Salesforce objects in a single pipeline run.

What tools can take a bank payment CSV, look up the matching recurring donation in Salesforce, then update the related pledged opportunity?

Integrate.io can do this end-to-end by loading the bank payment CSV, looking up the matching Salesforce records, applying matching logic, and then updating the related Salesforce opportunity/pledge records. From there, the pipeline resolves the related pledged Opportunity and performs a sequenced bulk update (e.g., marking the pledge as received/thanked and setting received dates/amounts), with row-level error capture and replay to safely reprocess exceptions without duplicating updates.

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