This story is a summary from our recent webinar, “Revolutionize Membership Payments with Salesforce & FinDock”, where Claire James, Delivery Lead for Salesforce at the National Trust, explained how they transformed their membership operations with Salesforce and FinDock. If your membership organisation is considering digital transformation, watch the webinar on demand to hear the full story.
Background
The National Trust is the UK’s largest conservation charity, caring for more than 780 miles of coastline, 250,000 hectares of countryside and hundreds of historic houses and gardens. Membership fees keep that work alive, but their in-house CRM system was struggling to keep up with today’s scale: 5.37 million members, 265k renewals a month and almost 3 million payments. Mounting technical debt, manual renewals and siloed finance systems were eroding both efficiency and member experience.
To turn things around, the National Trust chose Salesforce with FinDock. The summary below, shared by Claire, shows how they set their goals, delivered the new stack, unlocked rapid benefits, and what’s next on their digital roadmap.
Planning & Goal Setting
The National Trust realised its incumbent CRM system was no longer fit for purpose: this limited membership propositions, had a high cost in technical debt, and led to a poor member experience.
To reverse the decline, the team set a clear objective: improve operational efficiency, enhance member experience, and set foundations for 10-year growth. They drew up a clear checklist:
- Salesforce native
- Enterprise scale, API-first
- Maintainable by in-house staff with no further technical debt
After weighing the options, they selected Salesforce as the new CRM and chose FinDock as the native Salesforce payments engine. Together, those platforms promised an enterprise-scale, API-first architecture capable of supporting their ever-expanding membership while laying robust foundations for the decade ahead.
The Implementation Process
With clear goals, a defined MVP scope and tight internal alignment, the National Trust kicked off delivery by engaging a selected implementation partner to support the Salesforce + FinDock rollout. The programme integrated core Salesforce Service Cloud, CPQ, Marketing Cloud, Experience Cloud, Data Cloud and payments in a single stack.
At its peak, 160 people worked through about a thousand user stories across 22 business journeys, full data migration, and after three years of work—went live January 2023, turning the transformation vision into reality.
Go Live & Benefits
Going live unlocked a range of benefits:
- Smooth cut-over: transition from slow, manual CRM to a scalable solution built on Salesforce and FinDock for all memberships and donations.
- Faster Direct-Debit batch runs: 77 % faster batch processing – a Direct Debit run now takes 3 hours compared to 13 hours previously.
- Back-office gains: improved Gift Aid processes and Direct Debit mandate handling, with plenty of room for planned growth.
- Friction-free checkout: launch of Google Pay and Apple Pay simplifying online renewals and donations.
- Responsive support: “FinDock support is real time, very responsive and industry aligned,” giving teams rapid assistance and confidence as they scale.
Looking Ahead
Claire says they are now seeking better, more adaptive and flexible membership and gift-membership optimisations so members can enjoy richer benefits online and choose models that fit their lifestyles. The National Trust is in a strong position to review and renew current ways of working and adapt in a world that’s changing fast.
On the technical side, the Salesforce + FinDock stack gives them a scalable platform architected for further growth, positioning the charity to roll out new channels and payment methods quickly and to support an ever-growing member and supporter base over the next decade.