In late 2021, we were contracted to develop a web and database system for The Tyee, a progressive publication based in British Columbia. The Tyee’s membership program, Tyee Builders, was well-developed but lacked crucial infrastructure for both efficient staff management and member access.
Expand a strong membership program with smarter data architecture
The Tyee hired Congruity Works based on a recommendation from a nonprofit media expert, who had familiarity with our deep expertise in Drupal and Salesforce integration and knew that we had significant experience working with independent media publications and were already familiar with The Tyee’s membership program needs and pain points.
We jumped in and built out a custom Member Portal on The Tyee’s website with MailChimp and Salesforce integrations, enabling Tyee staff to more easily access the necessary parts of the membership program in less time and ensuring that members could update their payment information and make changes to their preferences.
Mission: Invite readers to engage The Tyee team and community within an inclusive, civil setting
One of The Tyee’s leading principles is the idea that readers come first. The publication depends on readers to support their award-winning journalism and keep all content free of paywalls. Readers are encouraged to deepen their relationship with The Tyee by subscribing to their free email newsletters and becoming a Tyee Builder to provide financial support.
Congruity Works brought big-picture thinking to our work with The Tyee, using our Drupal and Salesforce expertise to proactively manage integration for Tyee Builders in the custom Member Portal. The client recognized our managerial strength as well as our technical proficiency, saying that our project management skills give us a competitive advantage for nonprofit clients like themselves who don’t have the time or staff resources to closely manage contractors.
Strategy: Build dynamic data pathways from Drupal to external vendors
The Congruity Works team added value to The Tyee’s membership program interface by creating custom, dynamic pathways for data to flow from the Drupal Member Portal to other platforms including:
- MailChimp to handle email newsletters and marketing automation
- Salesforce to handle donor information and reporting
- Recurly and iATS to handle recurring ACH and credit card transactions.
These data flow pathways include automations that occur when a member or The Tyee staff:
- Adjusts newsletter subscriptions or changes email preferences
- Upgrades or downgrades a recurring membership amount
- Records a new recurring or one-time donation transaction
Tactics
We assessed their software and implemented the following plan:
- We built a Drupal-based Member Portal, allowing members to view and edit payment details, payment levels, and email subscriptions. We connected the Portal to Recurly, which handles credit card-based recurring memberships.
- We migrated the time-consuming, manually-handled recurring bank transactions to iATS for automated processing, and connect Drupal to iATS in order to allow bank-account Tyee Builder members to access their membership and payment settings.
- We built pathways from their member email preferences and data to flow from the Member Portal to MailChimp for email subscriptions and Salesforce as the CRM.
- We connected the Portal to the primary editorial website in order to allow single sign-on features, for example for members to avoid membership asks and banner ads.
Logistics: Technology automation and integration that enables the client team to reclaim more time for strategy work
We launched this project in two phases, the Drupal Member Portal in 2022 and the full Salesforce integration in 2023. Our work has enabled Tyee staff to avoid time-consuming repetitive tasks and customer service needs, allowing them to focus on improving and growing the membership program itself.