Jason Dobrolecki

a non profit marketing exec with a tech streak and accidental Salesforce Admin

I’ve been leading marketing teams in non profits, primarily with JCC and YMCAs for over 16 years. While leading both traditional marketing and digital marketing initiatives, I also have a serious tech streak. In my free time I keep up to date on the latest and greatest tech products, innovations, companies and more. With the marketing world being more and more intertwined with tech everyday, What started as social media and website, soon evolved into CRM software and other member experience platforms.

Every YMCA and JCC I’ve ever worked with had a BHAG: A single software platform that provided a complete view of a member, from membership to program registrations, to ticket sales, donations, volunteering and more. Problem was none of this was achievable on any of the software packages that were on the market.

In a very stereotypical meeting were we discussed finding a new software system, I through out a crazy idea… what if instead of starting with a membership management program that has CRM functionality and building from there, we started with a best in class CRM that served our communication and member engagement needs and an open API to build on additional solutions. What if instead of thinking about what other JCC and YMCAs were doing, we looked at what other businesses and complex corporations were doing. Why not look at Salesforce.

A year later we were implementing Salesforce for the first time for our development and event ticketing and migrating off of two separate systems that those two departments used. A year after that, we were implementing the rest of our business units (membership management, program registration, facility room bookings, tennis court reservations, personal training, POS, guest management, lead management, email marketing) all over to Salesforce. Today we have a single integrated stack on Salesforce where we can truly, for the very first time, see a full 360-degree view of a member, and in the face of Covid, we’ve launched a whole new digital experience, “J @Home” to deliver virtual experiences directly to our members’ homes through Salesforce Experience Cloud.

With all the opportunity that Salesforce brought, we couldn’t take advantage of it without a team of staff that could use it. As a non profit, we didn’t have the budget to hire consultants and Salesforce partners to own this day in and day out. I knew it was up to me to learn, train and motivate our own staff to become Salesforce experts. As I took on my own learning, I fell in love with the Salesforce platform. I started working my way through Trailheads, watching videos and reading blogs. I started to connect with our local Salesforce community and user groups. I found a welcoming and supportive community.

I’ve gone on to become a Salesforce Certified Non Profit Consultant, Platform App Builder and a Certified Salesforce Administrator. My agency has launched Salesforce, NPSP (Non Profit Success Pack), Volunteers for Salesforce, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Traction Rec, Traction Gather, PatronManager, Upace, Emma Email Marketing, Conga, Mogli, Twillio, Mailgun and FormStack.

This experience and my passion for non profits has lead me down the road of wanting to help other non profits harness the power of Salesforce as well. Utilizing Salesforce.org and the Power of Us network, Non Profits can get started on Salesforce free for up to 10 users, and at a reduced rate for larger non profits. I would love to show you how. Or if your non profit has already dove into the Salesforce ecosystem and you’re struggling to harness the power of the platform, I’d love to help you get the most out of your tools.