We are writing this to say thank you to Archima for their direct support to help make our nonprofit more successful – now and for many years in the future.
I have been friends with Chris Thompson and John Craven for almost 10 years. While work was our connection, our friendships grew from times over beers, food, and travel. When our sweet daughter was diagnosed with stage-4 metastatic breast cancer in 2013, they were always there to provide support across many spectrums. And when she died in 2017, they both flew into Memphis to give us hugs and participate in her Life Celebration Event.
So, it is not surprising that when we needed help improving the administration of our new nonprofit, Keesha Warrior Princess, they were the first to step up and say, “what can we do?”
Keesha Warrior Princess was named after our daughter, Keesha Furniss. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, our only concern was to engage where we were – to love and support her fully and not focus on “how this happened?” or “what did we miss?” For four years we focused on her needs – trips to places she had never been, experiences she missed at such a young age, and eight Luke Bryan concerts (even getting a chance to meet him in person after a social post went viral). Our decision to start a nonprofit happened based on several conversations with her where we talked about how we missed so many important signs along the way.
In 2018, I wrote an article in the Memphis paper that also went viral “The question every dad should ask his daughter…” After seeing the impact that the article made, and the admonition she left us with, to tell her story to save others, we decided to launch our nonprofit, focused on increasing early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer in women age 25-45 through education and community.
After launching in June 2020 during the pandemic, we were overwhelmed with the response. It did not take long for us to begin to struggle to manage donors and constituents on google spreadsheets. Having worked within the Salesforce community for almost 10 years, I knew about their nonprofit program to grant 10 free licenses to qualified nonprofits. But, I also knew that we needed help with implementation. Through a mutual friend, Chris heard about our plans and reached out immediately. We talked about the impact that Salesforce could make on our daily donor processes – and the possibilities of having such a powerful tool during the early stages of our nonprofit. Chris said, “Bob, we can build this for you.”
Several weeks later we were on our first call with an implementation team of 8 people – all ready to engage and understand more about our current state (spreadsheets and sticky notes) and most importantly, help us define the future. Over the next several weeks, we had early-morning and late-afternoon calls (mostly to accommodate my schedule) and then they began to design and build a Salesforce org created with our best practices in mind. With integrations to MailChimp and customer web forms designed for our website, the system came together in record time.
The team of Archima experts, Chris, Danny, Ramon, Jasmine, Nickey, Rich, and Kiran always made us feel like we were their only client. Their knowledge and insight around the Salesforce platform were second to none. From initial discovery through the agile build – to the delivery and training of how the system works, it was a testament to what a Salesforce partner experience should be.
So, while John and Chris are already friends of the family – they – along with the entire Archima team, are now definitely friends of our mission. And for many years to come, the foundational design and development work that they did, to set up our Salesforce platform, will allow us to tell our daughter’s story to more people – and ultimately help us save the lives of young women as they navigate their breast health.
For more information or to join in our mission visit www.warriorprincess.org.
