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NHSA Finds More Than a Membership Database in Fonteva

Eliminated
data silos

Real-time visibility into constituent and financial data

Increased user
adoption

Integrated collaboration functionality

The National Head Start Association (NHSA) is a national nonprofit organization driven by the mission of ensuring every child is supported to have a long and successful life. Born in 1974, the NHSA has been the leading advocate for policy and institutional changes to support children, families, and communities to ensure all children have the developmental and educational resources needed to succeed.

The Challange

After using NHSA’s legacy system for 18 months, staff members were already quite unhappy with it due to its poor end user interface and reporting capability. NHSA’s employees were challenged to work quickly and efficiently in their legacy system, which would take two to three minutes to save changes and often timed out before doing so.

The Solution

NHSA Needed a More Robust Application

Christianson was initially attracted to Fonteva because it is cloud-based and built on the Salesforce® platform. NHSA uses Fonteva for online membership applications and renewals, to manage its membership and donor database, for back office functions such as processing donations and payments, and to generate financial information.

Christianson appreciates Fonteva’s strong integration with the association’s newly designed website and robust authentication but ultimately selected Fonteva because of its value and cloud-based, mobile functionality. “The staff wholeheartedly loves this product,” says Christianson.

“The product is built to meet the needs of associations who want to connect with their members… The power of Fonteva has excited everyone in the organization, from the Executive Director to the Membership staff.”

Lori Christianson, Director of Technology, NHSA

The Bottom Line

NHSA uses Fonteva for member engagement with a private membership community, which offers easy applications, renewals and member self-service. One of their member’s favorite features is print-on-demand membership cards, which has reduced staff time by 80% allowing NHSA to focus on other member benefits. NHSA members are also very active in the community portal, joining groups and adding resources. “Having a good interface with the public is very important to us,” she says.  

The switch has been accompanied by a cultural change: “I’m encouraging staff to leverage Fonteva’s functionality, and to see it as being for more than just membership,” Christianson says.

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