Challenge

BCNP’s team are experts in climate and nature, not in system administration. Their setup had grown in a way many charities will recognise:

• Four tools, no single view: Contacts sat in Salesforce, emails went out through Mailchimp, events were managed in Humanitix and reporting lived in Excel.
• A CRM nobody had time to run: With no in-house admin, most of the team weren’t logging notes or meetings, so Salesforce never became the source of truth.
• Simple questions, slow answers: Finding out which organisations had attended which events meant stitching together several exports.
• Data quality: Better data was needed for impact reporting and business development, and duplicates and out-of-date records made that hard.
• Limited capacity: Whatever replaced it had to be easy to learn, and the team had to be able to own it from day one.

Solution

1. An honest comparison, then a clear recommendation

We started by setting out two options side by side: improving Salesforce, or moving to HubSpot. Staying put would have fixed some surface issues, but the root causes of complexity, manual data entry and low adoption would remain. We recommended HubSpot Sales Hub Professional, Service Hub Professional and Marketing Hub Starter, with the non-profit discount applied, replacing Salesforce, Mailchimp and the manual spreadsheets.

2. Migration and set-up

We moved BCNP’s records into HubSpot and rebuilt the way information flows in.

• Data and structure: Contacts and organisations were brought across and organised around how BCNP works, including membership status and organisation-level views.
• Forms straight into HubSpot: Website and membership forms now create records directly, so new enquiries no longer depend on a sync.
• Event attendance on the record: We built attendance reporting on both contact and organisation records, with a short walkthrough video the team can return to.
• Automation: Automated responses and membership emails, including a welcome email once an application is approved, now run from HubSpot.

3. Training built around their own questions

Rather than a generic demo, we ran a half-day workshop with the core team that worked through their real transition questions. They left with an action list and got on with it. We backed this with short recorded walkthroughs, so new starters and part-time team members can catch up at their own pace.

4. A clean switch-off of Salesforce

Once forms and workflows were live in HubSpot, we guided the team through retiring the Salesforce integration. Historical data stayed in Salesforce, nothing was deleted from either side, and the team made the final switch-off themselves.

5. Support that scales with the team

After go-live we stayed close, helping with the practical issues that come up as a team takes ownership of a new system:

• Data clean-up: We helped untangle imported event contacts and records previously cleaned by Mailchimp.
• Shared inbox: We advised on how a shared inbox behaves in HubSpot and how to keep it tidy.
• Team access: We helped plan seats, permissions and logins so everyone could work safely.
• Workflows and properties: We supported the team as they tidied up workflows and properties for themselves.

BCNP now have one place for members, partners, events and communications, run by the people who use it every day. The team moved from “we can’t get the answers out” to building their own workflows, segments and reports, and chose to retire Salesforce on their own timetable.

Here’s what Hannah Roddis, Head of Business Development at BCNP, has to say:

“Our contacts, memberships and events were spread across Salesforce, Mailchimp, Excel and Humanitix, and none of us had the time or the expertise to make that work. Wave recommended HubSpot, helped us move across and ran a workshop built around our own questions, so we left with a clear list of actions rather than a generic demo. The team now build their own workflows and reports, are working more efficiently and much prefer using HubSpot to Salesforce, and we switched off Salesforce on our own timetable. It has improved our processes and made us more professional, event management in particular, and once we finalise our reporting it will deliver far greater insights to help drive more informed business decisions. Harry has been practical, patient and easy to ask for help, and the workshop alone made a difference to how confident we all feel using the system.”

Hannah Roddis, Head of Business Development, Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership