Lance Armstrong Foundation Uses Kintera Connect to Integrate Applications

Lance Armstrong Foundation
The Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) unites people to fight cancer, believing that unity is strength, knowledge is power and attitude is everything.We provide the practical information and tools people battling cancer need to live life on their own terms.We take aim at the gap between what is known and what is done to prevent death and suffering due to cancer.We engage the public at large to pursue an agenda focused on preventing cancer, ensuring access to screening and care, improving the quality of life for people affected by cancer, and investing in needed research. Founded in 1997 by cancer survivor and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong, the LAF is located in Austin,Texas. UNITE at LIVESTRONG.org. 

"By creating a centralized system that stores, combines, and transmits information from our e-commerce site and Lock Box, where all our offline transactions are sent, to our Kintera CRM and accounting applications,we have been able to get the most cohesive view of our operations. Leveraging Kintera Web Services enabled LAF new opportunities to integrate various applications quickly, cost-effectively and in a developer-friendly environment."

– Betty Otter-Nickerson,
Chief Operating Officer Lance Armstrong Foundation

The Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) quickly grew to become one of the most visible and inspirational charities of its kind.This quick growth created some “good problems” for the organization, specifically issues related to its internal infrastructure.The organization needed a cohesive and meaningful view of its constituents. In order to achieve this, the Foundation needed to know what merchandise a donor purchased, what online and offline gifts the donor made, and it all needed to correlate with a single transaction record in a system that enabled unified financial reporting.

The LAF used Kintera Connect to tie critical applications together and create an integration that functions efficiently as a single system.The connector application that LAF built integrating Kintera Connect pulls data from a variety of locations, including the Web interface provided by the service processing LAF’s offline transactions, the Web interface for merchandise purchases, and the organization’s database of record, Kintera CRM. The data flow between service providers and the Foundation’s database is bi-directional and serves as a staging point for data entry into the accounting system.

“By creating a centralized system that stores, combines, and transmits information from our e-commerce site and Lock Box, where all our offline transactions are sent, to our Kintera CRM and accounting applications,we have been able to get the most cohesive view of our operations,” said Betty Otter-Nickerson, chief operating officer for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. “Leveraging Kintera Connect enabled LAF new opportunities to integrate various applications quickly, cost-effectively and in a developer-friendly environment.”

Result highlights:

  • With the help of Kintera Connect, the team at LAF was able to create the integration in less than 12 weeks.
  • Over 2.5 million records are stored in Kintera CRM.