Crankstart is a private foundation based in the San Francisco Bay Area, dedicated to creating meaningful change through strategic grant making. Focused on bolstering the foundations of a just society - by supporting nonprofits across education, economic mobility, housing security, the arts, and beyond - Crankstart distributes over $250 million in grants annually, guided by a small, highly dedicated team.
As Crankstart scaled rapidly from a small operation to one of the most active private foundations in the US, they needed a grants management system that could keep pace. Passion Fruit Partners stepped in to help Crankstart unlock the full potential of their Salesforce implementation, transforming it from a system with untapped potential into a reliable, single source of truth for all grant making operations. The result is a team that can move faster and do more with less.
Grant data was spread across multiple systems, making it difficult to access reliable, consistent information quickly.
Without automation, even routine tasks required multiple steps, consuming time that a lean team could not afford to lose.
A fast-growing grant portfolio and expanding team needed a technology infrastructure that could match the pace.
Crankstart wanted Salesforce to enable their team to provide operational excellence across grantmaking and had the following pain points:
"It's night and day from anyone we've worked with before." Eli Bildner, VP of Operations and New Ventures, Crankstart Foundation
Passion Fruit Partners worked closely with Crankstart to build Salesforce into a powerful, reliable foundation for all grant making operations. Taking a thoughtful, phased approach, the team focused first on securing the fundamentals and then on accelerating toward operational excellence.
"Justin is fast, thorough, thoughtful, and considered in how we approach problems. He's able to shift seamlessly between the ‘doing mode’ of just building stuff that works well and the tactical mode of really thinking about how to implement things."
Provided honest, nuanced guidance on technical decisions, including around Salesforce packages and long-term platform strategy.
"He'll push back a little bit and say, 'Sure we could do that, but I think the problem you're trying to solve is this. Here are three other ways we could potentially solve it.' He presents options and then says let's talk about it."
The partnership between Crankstart Foundation and Passion Fruit Partners has transformed how the organization operates. By building a reliable single source of truth, introducing smart automations, and completing key platform functionality, the team can now focus on what matters most, deploying capital to causes that make a difference. With a lean, highly capable team and a system they can truly trust, Crankstart is well positioned to grow its impact further.
"There are so many examples of things that took four or five steps before that now take one or two." Eli Bildner, Crankstart Foundation
"The biggest time saving has really just come from trust and confidence. That little piece of brain power you're using to think about that body of work, you can just devote it to something else." Eli Bildner, Crankstart Foundation
"I expected to get through maybe half of what I thought we needed to build by mid-year. We've just raced through a lot of what I thought would take much, much longer." Eli Bildner, Crankstart Foundation
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