BOSTON, Jan. 15, 2019 – The Contributor Development Partnership (CDP), a Boston-based collaborative fundraising service for public media stations, announced today that its investment, development partner and primary CRM platform provider, roundCorner, has been acquired by Salesforce.org. This transaction ensures a robust product roadmap and ongoing innovation and investment from CDP on behalf of dozens of public media non-profits currently using roundCorner’s world-class CRM, NGO Connect.  

With yesterday’s acquisition of roundCorner, a Philadelphia-based company focused on enterprise CRM solutions for nonprofits, Salesforce.org will help organizations achieve their missions of social good through comprehensive, cloud-based technology. “Together, Salesforce.org and roundCorner will further power our community of customers with solutions to advance their missions,” said Rob Acker, CEO of Salesforce.org in a statement.

CDP has been a seed investor, board participant and NGO Connect development partner with roundCorner from inception. In 2010, when Boston public media powerhouse, WGBH, needed to reimagine its own fundraising technology, Ben Godley, then WGBH COO, partnered with roundCorner to help build a solution on the Salesforce.org platform. That development effort, along with WGBH’s resource investment, helped create today’s flagship roundCorner product, NGO Connect. The roundCorner company has grown to include hundreds of leading non-profits, including Salvation Army, Girl Scouts, ASPCA, and City Year among its NGO Connect customer base.

“CDP has always been on the forefront of challenging roundCorner to be able to leverage the rapidly evolving capabilities of the Salesforce.org platform for public media,” said Nick Ward, Chairman of the Board at roundCorner. “This acquisition cements the tight connection between Salesforce.org’s emerging technical possibilities and CDP’s vision for where public media needs to go.”

“We are pleased that Salesforce.org recognized the power and value of roundCorner’s solution and its importance in helping public media organizations better serve their constituents,” added Ben Godley, CEO of CDP and roundCorner board member. “We are more committed than ever to support Salesforce.org in their expansion of the market.” 

CDP has been roundCorner’s exclusive partner in serving the public media community and, today, more than 1/3 of all public TV and radio donors are managed on the NGO Connect platform. Among its many innovations on behalf of public media, CDP recently integrated the PBS Passport video service, a member benefit offered to station donors, into the NGO Connect database allowing stations to view giving, donor and content consumption data in the same account record. This bi-directional sync to the PBS data in an easy-to-use, cloud-based CRM helps stations deepen their engagement and relationships with their constituents.

“Our primary goal is to help public media stations raise more net revenue in support of their missions,” says Michal Heiplik, CDP’s Executive Director. “Stations depend upon us to invest wisely and choose the best solutions. We’re thrilled that Salesforce.org agrees roundCorner and NGO Connect are best-in-class technology.”

In 2011, Godley, in partnership with Heiplik, internally launched CDP services at WGBH with a mission to help sustain a thriving public media system. In December 2018, CDP became a standalone public benefit corporation focused on helping local stations grow their active donor files and increase net revenues through the development of best-practices in fundraising, scaled vendor management, innovative fundraising and operational services, and best-of-breed technology systems. Stations can then use these new resources to better serve their local communities. To date, CDP fundraising services have helped member stations collectively raise more than $150 million of incremental net revenue.