Ascendium Education Group - Salesforce Community Engagement Database

Working alongside a four-person team for Ascendium Education Group, a national nonprofit and one of the country's largest federal student loan guarantors, I helped design and build a Salesforce-based information system to replace a patchwork of Microsoft Forms, spreadsheets, and email approvals. What began as a single workflow for tracking employee Volunteer Time Off (VTO) grew into an organization-wide platform connecting employees, departments, nonprofit partners, donors, and community events under one relational database. My focus was on the technical build: mapping the process models, designing the entity relationships, and implementing the schema, automations, and reporting layer inside Salesforce itself. The system centers on a thirteen-object relational schema, built out with master-detail and lookup relationships connecting Employees, Departments, Donors, Donations, Nonprofits, Events, Proposals, and VTO Entries. On top of that schema sit automated VTO balance and matching-donation calculations, role-based access controls with a logged audit trail, and live dashboards that give HR staff and leadership a real-time view of volunteer participation, nonprofit impact, and grant activity, something the org's spreadsheet-based process had never been able to produce.

• • Relational Database Architecture: Designed a thirteen-object Salesforce schema, Employee, Department, Donor, Donation, Nonprofit, Organization in Need, Event, Proposal, Proposed Activity, and VTO Entry among them, connected through master-detail and lookup relationships in Schema Builder.
• • Automated VTO & Matching Calculations: Replaced manual spreadsheet math with formula-driven fields that calculate remaining VTO balances, matching-donation eligibility, and payout amounts in real time as hours are logged.
• • Process Modeling & Systems Analysis: Ran a full PIECES and TELOS feasibility analysis against Ascendium's existing Forms-and-Excel workflow, then modeled the proposed system through a context diagram and Level 1 and Level 2 data flow diagrams across five core processes.
• • Real-Time Dashboards & Reporting: Built Salesforce reports and a live dashboard surfacing VTO hours by department, top-volunteer leaderboards, and nonprofit-by-nonprofit donation and matching totals for HR and leadership visibility.
• • Role-Based Access & Audit Trail: Implemented record-level security and timestamped change logging so every approval and edit is traceable, supporting the compliance and legal requirements identified in the TELOS analysis.
• • Object Layouts & Data Entry Forms: Configured page layouts and entry forms for every object in the schema, from donor intake to VTO logging, so non-technical staff could use the system without touching the underlying data model.
• • Documentation & Handoff: Co-authored the system's full user manual and final report, walking a non-technical reader through login, navigation, the schema, and every object in the system.