North Edge

From Managing $100K to $6M+ - Empowering Regional Economic Growth Through Salesforce

About the Charity

North Edge (formerly AEDC) is a California-based economic development organization focused on strengthening regional economies through small business lending and program delivery.

Previously managing $100k, the organization grew rapidly and now manages transformative programs, including a $6 million child care stabilisation grant and the multi-county Redwood Region Rise initiative, which collectively aim to drive equitable economic development. With growing responsibilities and new state and county funding, North Edge turned to Salesforce and Passion Fruit Partners to deliver a digital foundation capable of supporting their expanding impact.

Pain Points

One System To Power Growth

North Edge was overseeing grants exceeding $6 million using spreadsheets due to their rapid growth. Without adding to their team, they needed a more efficient way to manage funding, track recipients, and measure program outcomes and impact.

Time Consuming Reporting

The team needed a faster, clearer way to show how funds were used across regions and communities, with insight-rich reporting that would make it easier to respond to board members and funders, without manually compiling data from multiple sources.

Easier Transparency

North Edge needed a transparent, shared system that gave all 23 tribal nations, counties, partners, and residents visibility into who was involved, solving the challenge of ensuring equal representation and shared ownership across the initiative.

"We went from managing $100K projects to handling over $6M in a year. We knew we needed a system that could help us grow, with all of the tools to report with, without burning out our team."
Susan Seaman
Program Director

The Challenges

As the organization grew they wanted to solve the following areas which were areas to solve with Salesforce:

01

Aiming to Deliver More Impact with Existing Resources

  • North Edge was managing increasingly large grants using spreadsheets; the team didn't increase headcount and wanted a better way to track grants, recipients, and program outcomes and impact.
  • With a growing ecosystem of providers and initiatives, the team was committed to capturing the full picture of support, even if it meant logging information across multiple programs.
  • Staff dedicated time to ensuring each participant’s engagement was fully recorded, striving for clarity and consistency in a high-growth environment, this took up a huge amount of the team's time.

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02

Seeking Smarter Reporting Tools

  • The team recognized the need for faster, clearer ways to break down how funds were used across regions and communities.
  • They wanted to make it easier to respond to board members and funders with insight-rich reporting.
  • Reporting across programs had previously required compiling data from multiple places, and they were looking for a smarter, streamlined way to do this.

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03

Building Trust Through Public Transparency

  • As part of Redwood Region Rise, North Edge aimed to create an open, visible platform that would allow partners and residents to see who was involved and represented.
  • They wanted to build a shared system that would reflect the voices of all 23 tribal nations and participating counties.
  • Delivering transparency was key to creating a sense of shared ownership and visibility for all stakeholders.

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04

Report-ready dashboards

  • The team needed a solution that would allow them to have reports ready in minutes.
  • They also wanted to be able to pull all reports for certain areas together into dashboards.
  • The team wanted to be able to make data driven decisions and also use 100% of the data in the platform to inform their team.

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05

Growing the Mission Without Growing the Team

  • With projects now totalling millions, North Edge focused on building infrastructure to scale smartly, not just quickly.
  • Their net assets grew from $100K to $6M, and they wanted systems that matched the complexity and opportunity of their programs.
  • The team was deeply committed to expanding their reach while maintaining high-quality service delivery.

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The Solution

Passion Fruit Partners built two Salesforce-based solutions for North Edge: one for the Child Care Stabilization Program and one for Redwood Region Rise. Both solutions enabled tracking of grants, stipends, loans, and engagement, while promoting transparency and public trust.

01

Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack

  • Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack with Programme Management was selected for its affordability, flexibility, and scalability.
  • Full reporting was built out to reflect the needs of the team and their day to day activities.
  • Stakeholder engagement was centralized communication and engagement tracking with everything recorded in one place.
  • One central source of truth for everything the organization does - we worked with their team to ensure everything was on one platform.
02

Experience Cloud - Directory Portal

  • A custom directory portal was built for Redwood Region Rise, on Experience Cloud. This allowed any of the rural communities to have a way of collaborating at a distance. Instead of an old webpage that hosted a PDF, they now have a portal to log into and see live updated information.
  • The platform needed to empower residents who wanted to know who was representing their neighbourhood to quickly find the answer to this.
  • The solution also needed to transparently show 23 tribal nations and regional stakeholders involved to ensure people knew who they could ask for help, the portal also showed who had specific expertise.

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03

A Custom Tracking System In Their Nonprofit Success Pack

Built on Salesforce's Programme Management Module, the team at PFP built a solution to enable their team to be able to track all the grants and loans. It also needed to track program participation, to record all of the ways people are creating impacts, and the ways people are involved via activity tracking.

  • This then rolled up into customized reports for their leadership team, to save them time having to manually create them.

Impact

406
Child care-related grants tracked in Salesforce so far
$1.5M
Delivered and tracked through one platform to date
100%
All data in one place for accurate and instant reporting

Salesforce and Passion Fruit Partners has delivered faster insights, stronger transparency, streamlined grant tracking, and scalable systems.

01

Data-Driven Grant Tracking

  • Enabled tracking of 406 child care-related grants and $1.5 million in funding for one part of their program.
  • Connected retention and hiring bonuses, loans, and other services to individual providers.
  • Linked all funding requests to contacts for seamless ecosystem tracking.
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"We can now answer detailed questions in seconds that used to take days. When someone asks about support for a rural community, we have the data right there."

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02

Improved Efficiency and Time Savings

  • Reduced manual data re-entry across programs and phases for their entire team.
  • Automated the links between childcare providers and their funding history, to be able to demonstrate their journey with North Edge in one place.
  • Salesforce has replaced multi-step spreadsheet processes that were error-prone and slow, reducing the number of hours staff are spending on manual entry.
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"We used to enter the same person multiple times. Now, if someone gets a retention bonus and later hires someone new, we can track all of it in one place."

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03

Transparent Collaboration

  • Delivered a public-facing portal showing who sits on each table of the regional collaborative.
  • Enabled residents to find out who represents them in decision-making.
  • Helped build trust and transparency with the 23 tribal nations and regional stakeholders.
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"Transparency is central to our work. Now anyone can go online and see who represents them on our collaborative. That level of openness didn’t exist before."

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04

Scalable Systems for a Growing Mission

  • Allowed North Edge to handle $10M+ in active grants with a lean team, not increasing headcount.
  • Provided a platform to continue scaling without needing more headcount.
  • Laid a foundation for future expansion and improved program delivery.
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"We went from managing $100K projects to handling $6 million due to the pandemic, and the huge need for support. Salesforce gives us the infrastructure to grow without burning out our team."

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05

Rapid Access to Insights

  • Used Salesforce dashboards to quickly visualise how much funding went to different communities and categories.
  • Developed ad-hoc reports in response to partner or funder needs.
  • Evolved internal processes based on real-time access to information.
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"The day it all clicked, we realised: this is why we did the work. The reports and dashboards let us see the full picture and respond instantly."

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"Passion Fruit Partners was responsive, thoughtful, and a joy to work with. Even outside the scope of work, they helped us. I never felt like just another client. I always felt supported."
Susan Seaman
Program Director
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