How Vierstroom is building a membership platform for every generation with Salesforce and FinDock

Vierstroom is a Dutch healthcare and membership organization dedicated to helping people live independently and comfortably for as long as possible. Through its membership services division, the organization supports more than 60,000 members with services, advice, and benefits that contribute to their wellbeing and quality of life.

For more than 26 years, Vierstroom’s membership organization relied on the same system. It had served the organization well, but over time it became harder to support the ambitions Vierstroom had for the future. Processes that worked years ago were becoming increasingly difficult to scale, automate and improve.

As member expectations evolved and the organization looked for ways to engage both existing and future generations of members, Vierstroom decided it was time for a new foundation.

Together with Salesforce, FinDock and implementation partner, the organization moved its membership administration and payment operations to Salesforce.

Creating a foundation for growth

While Vierstroom is a much larger organization, its membership services division is run by a relatively small team supporting more than 60,000 paying members.

As Vierstroom’s ambitions around automation, member engagement and scalability grew, the organization increasingly found itself working around the limitations of its existing system.

“We increasingly ran into the limits of what the system could support.”

The organization wanted to:

• Automate repetitive administrative work
• Create stronger connections between membership data, communications and payments
• Support future growth without increasing manual workload
• Modernize member experiences while continuing to serve less digitally active members

After evaluating different CRM solutions, Vierstroom selected Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and FinDock as the foundation for its future member platform.

Supporting every member’s preferred payment journey

One of Vierstroom’s key requirements was flexibility.

While many members prefer digital payment methods, a significant part of the membership base still relies on letters and manual bank transfers. Moving everyone to a fully digital process simply wasn’t realistic.

Imagine being 80 years old and suddenly being expected to manage everything digitally. The local bank branch has almost fully disappeared. Services that once involved a phone call or paper form now require online portals, passwords and apps. What feels convenient to one generation can feel overwhelming to another.

Vierstroom sees that reality every day. While the organization wants to encourage efficient payment methods such as direct debit, it also recognizes that many members still prefer receiving a letter and manually transferring their contribution. Supporting those members is not seen as an exception. It is part of providing good service.

“We want to stimulate direct debit as much as possible because it is the most efficient process. At the same time, we have members who still want to pay manually. We need to support both.”

Turning flexibility into everyday payment processes

That need for flexibility now comes together in the way Vierstroom manages its membership payments in Salesforce and FinDock. The platform supports the core payment processes around membership, while still allowing different journeys for different members. This includes:

• Supporting both direct debit and manual payment methods
• Managing annual membership contributions from a single platform
• Offering digital payment links while continuing to support letter-based payment journeys
• Automating payment reminders and follow-up communications
• Collecting payments for member events through PayLinks
• Processing refunds through SEPA Credit Transfer
• Bringing member, payment and financial data together in Salesforce

Members who prefer digital communication can receive payment links by email. Members who prefer traditional communication can continue receiving letters and paying manually.

For Vierstroom, that means payment operations can become more efficient while the member experience remains flexible, personal and accessible.

A platform with more potential still to unlock

Vierstroom sees the implementation as the beginning of a longer journey.

The organization is continuing to explore additional automation opportunities, including e-mandates and further optimization of payment processes.

For a relatively small team supporting tens of thousands of members, those improvements can make a significant difference.

“We invest in systems and automation because we have a lot of work with a relatively small team.”

The biggest benefit so far is having a platform that can continue to evolve alongside the organization, something that had become increasingly difficult with the previous system.

Advice for other membership organizations

Looking back, Vierstroom encourages organizations to be realistic about the role of analogue processes.

Even in a digital-first world, some members will continue to prefer letters, manual payments or telephone registrations.

“You should not assume everything will become completely digital. If you serve a certain target group, there will always be an analogue component and the technology you choose should support that.”

For Vierstroom, the goal is not to force every member into the same journey.

It is to create a platform that supports both digital convenience and personal service, while giving the organization the flexibility to keep improving in the years ahead.