Clouver helped the CVUH Lausanne Foundation automate online giving for a three‑person team

CHUV Lausanne University Hospital Foundation wanted every online donation to land in Raiser’s Edge cleanly and automatically—without staff re‑typing gifts, worrying about errors, or learning integration tools.

We worked with them to replace manual re‑entry of every online donation with a managed connection between RaiseNow and Raiser’s Edge. We designed it, implemented it, and continue to run it as their trusted data and integration partner, so they can stay focused on donors instead of systems.

A few months later, a tragedy pushed their online volume from around 150 donations per month to almost 3,000 in a single month, and the same three‑person team handled it without changing how they worked.

Results at a glance

• 20x spike in online donations handled with the same 3‑person team

• Manual re‑entry of online gifts eliminated (≈½ day/month plus review)

• Consistent records between RaiseNow and Raiser’s Edge, even at peak volume

• Swiss data residency preserved

• No new tools to learn since we operate the connection as a service

CHUV at a glance

• Organization: CHUV Lausanne University Hospital Foundation (Lausanne, Switzerland)

• Team: 3 employees

• Hospital size: ~13,000 employees

• Typical online volume (before): ~150 donations/year

• Systems: RaiseNow (with Twint) for online giving; Koalect for peer-to-peer fundraising initiatives; Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT as CRM

• Requirements: Swiss data residency and strict privacy expectations

Two good systems, one manual gap

When we first spoke with Michèle Joanisse, CHUV’s foundation director, their core systems were already in place:

• Online gifts came in through RaiseNow, often via Twint, Switzerland’s dominant mobile payment method.

• Donor history and stewardship lived in Raiser’s Edge NXT.

What they didn’t have was a reliable way to get information from RaiseNow into Raiser’s Edge without doing it by hand.

For each online donation, someone on the team had to:

• Open the donation in RaiseNow

• Manually create or update the donor and gift in Raiser’s Edge

• Check that the amount and details were correct

At roughly 150 online donations per year, this meant about half a day of data entry every month, plus review time. It worked, but it came with constant risk:

• Typos in names, addresses, salutations, or gift amounts

• Donors contacted in the wrong language (French vs English)

• No easy way to absorb a sudden increase in donations

All of this also had to respect a firm boundary: donor data needed to stay in Switzerland and comply with local privacy law.

Why They Partnered With Us (Not a Self‑Serve Tool)

Before working with us, CHUV looked for integration options through the usual channels and evaluated a few different approaches. 

Some of those options would have required:

• Hosting data outside Switzerland, which didn’t fit their residency requirements

• Significant hands‑on configuration and ongoing maintenance by their own team

• Taking on another technical tool and learning how to operate it

For a small, non‑technical fundraising and ops team, that wasn’t a good match.

In our early conversations, a few priorities became clear:

• Michèle and her team wanted to stay focused on fundraising and donor relationships, not on APIs and error logs. A self‑serve connector or low‑code platform would have shifted technical work onto them.

• They were looking for a partner to take responsibility: understand their setup, decide how information should move from RaiseNow into Raiser’s Edge, and keep that connection working over time.

• Running everything in Switzerland was non‑negotiable.

• They needed someone who understood nonprofit data and donor relationships, not just systems.

“Do it yourself? Not with our limited capacity and primary focus. We needed someone who could take care of everything for us so we can focus on what we do best.” - Michèle Joanisse, Foundation Director, CHUV Foundation

On that basis, CHUV Foundation chose to work with us as their data and integration partner rather than adopt a tool they would have to run themselves.

What We Put in Place

We designed, built, and now operate a connection between RaiseNow and Raiser’s Edge NXT that reflects how CHUV Foundation actually works.

Online donations flow straight into the CRM

We set up a managed connection that:

• Watches for new online donations in RaiseNow

• Creates the corresponding gift in Raiser’s Edge with the right amount, date, and coding

• Creates or updates the donor record when needed

From CHUV’s point of view, online gifts now “just show up” in Raiser’s Edge. No one on their side configures integration settings or writes code.

Data structured for their reporting

We worked closely with their team to understand their workflows and agree on how they want the information to be added in RE NXT: 

• Learned how they already use funds, campaigns, appeals, and segments

• Implemented the mapping from RaiseNow into that structure

• Tested with real examples and refined the handful of exceptions we discovered together

Gifts created through the connection behave like gifts they would have entered themselves, and their existing reports still make sense.

Language and salutations handled automatically

Because CHUV Foundation communicates in French and English, we also:

• Encoded their rules for preferred language

• Applied their salutation conventions in both languages

New records arrive with the correct language and salutation, instead of needing manual fixes.

Everything hosted in Switzerland

We run the connection on infrastructure located in Switzerland, so donor data is processed and stored in‑country and residency expectations are met without extra exceptions or workarounds.

An ongoing integration team

We continue to act as CHUV Foundation’s integration team:

• Watching that the connection is running as expected

• Adjusting mappings if the Foundation’s internal structure changes

• Helping them think through new automation and data flows as their needs evolve

They have a partner who knows their setup and works to keep it working smoothly instead of them having a new system to manage themselves. 

The real win for CHUV isn’t just handling a spike; it’s knowing that every online gift arrives in Raiser’s Edge correctly, without anyone touching an integration tool or re‑typing data.

How Their Day‑to‑Day Changed

For CHUV, the impact showed up in what disappeared from their daily workload.

Before:

• Export or view donations in RaiseNow

• Re‑enter each gift in Raiser’s Edge

• Fix typos or mismatches in names, addresses, amounts, and codes

After:

• Monitor online donations in RaiseNow as usual

• See those same donations appear in Raiser’s Edge soon after, already mapped and structured

• Spend their time on acknowledgements, segmentation, and planning, not on moving data around

They didn’t have to adopt or learn an integration product; the manual work simply went away.

January: 30 → ~3,000 Donations in One Month

The value of that change became very clear in January 2026.

A tragedy prompted an exceptional wave of support, and online donations jumped:

• From the usual ~150 per year

• To almost 3,000 in one month

Under the old process, this would have meant thousands of records to enter and check in Raiser’s Edge while the hospital and foundation were under pressure.

With the connection in place:

• RaiseNow accepted and recorded incoming gifts

• Our integration created the matching records in Raiser’s Edge automatically

• Donor and gift data stayed aligned across both systems without manual intervention

Michèle described that moment simply:

Had we not done this work, I don’t know how we could have handled the influx without giving it our team’s entire focus. Instead we were able to focus on supporting those who needed it the most and communicating with our generous donors.

Instead of scrambling to keep their CRM up to date, the team focused on thanking donors, coordinating messages with hospital leadership, and providing accurate, current data for internal stakeholders. 

If This Sounds Familiar

If you’re leading operations or a foundation team and any of this feels close to home—manual re‑entry between systems, strict data‑residency rules, a small team that can’t afford to babysit integration tools, or simply the need for cleaner, more reliable donor data—this is exactly the kind of problem we solve.

We act as the integration partner in the background, so whether your online giving is steady or suddenly surges, your data still moves cleanly and your team can stay focused on donors and decisions instead of integrations.