For more than forty years, the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) relied mainly on government support and sponsorships to fund its incredible creative work. A formal philanthropy function did not exist during that period, and the organization had a limited way to track donors or audience members. A ticketing platform called AudienceView attempted to serve as both a CRM and a ticketing tool, but performed poorly in both roles, making fundraising less sophisticated and sometimes time-consuming.
The pandemic became a turning point. VIFF created its first philanthropy department and hired Director of Philanthropy Shahriar Pedram to build a sustainable fundraising program from the ground up. The team selected Salesforce through the nonprofit license program. Still, an early implementation with a previous vendor left the system partially configured, disconnected from ticketing and marketing systems, and not designed to support fundraising.
After two years of workarounds, VIFF seriously considered alternatives to Salesforce. But after receiving a technology upgrade grant from the Government of Canada, Shahriar was able to change the way they used technology forever. With new funding, VIFF partnered with Passion Fruit Partners to rebuild Salesforce as a fundraising-ready CRM, having seen their work with other film festivals and nonprofits, VIFF knew Passion Fruit Partners was the partner for them, reconnecting it to the ticketing system and introducing the data structure and integrations needed to turn audience insight into donor relationships.
Donor and audience information existed across multiple systems but needed to be unified.
Ticketing, email, and their current CRM needed alignment across their team, so that they could work as one team.
To unite the team's insights, knowledge and to enable them to have better detail into their organization they needed to unify all data in a standardized way.
Challenges Faced by the Vancouver International Film Festival
Passion Fruit Partners partnered with VIFF to enhance Salesforce, strengthen integrations, and create a sustainable foundation for a growing philanthropy program.
“PFP helped us establish conventions that make our data clear, usable, and effective. It’s readable for staff and structured in a way the system can genuinely work with."
Salesforce has become a central pillar of VIFF’s fundraising strategy. With integrated systems, a stronger data structure, and new internal capability, VIFF now has a clear view of its audiences and donors, enabling deeper engagement and long-term sustainability.
“We’re able to see who comes back year after year, who gives, and how people connect with VIFF. That insight has strengthened our ability to engage.”
“We knew Salesforce had the potential to become a central part of our fundraising strategy. We just needed it configured in a way that truly worked for an arts organization like ours.”
“When updates affected our integrations, Passion Fruit worked directly with our vendor to resolve them. It strengthened the connector for us and for others.”
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