What Foundations Get Wrong (and Right) Along the Way
When we talk to foundations about implementing Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud as their grants management system, the conversation usually starts the same way: “We need a new GMS.” After years of doing this work, we have learned that the technology is rarely the hardest part.
The 2024 State of Philanthropy Tech report from the Technology Association of Grantmakers (TAG) makes this clear. Custom-built grants management systems have nearly disappeared (down to just 3% of foundations), and Salesforce adoption continues to rise. But the real story isn’t about which platform is winning. It’s about how organizations approach the change itself.
Here’s what we’ve seen work and what tends to trip up even the most well-intentioned implementation efforts.
Start With Your Why (And Your People)
Before anyone spins up a Salesforce org or maps a single field, a different set of conversations needs to happen. Usually more than one.
Nearly 70% of foundations now work in hybrid or remote environments. That means your grants system has to work just as well for a grants officer logging in from home at 7am as it does for the program team at the conference table. This isn’t just a technical requirement. It affects how you need to design workflows, notifications, and approval processes.
IT capacity matters just as much. The average foundation now has a 14:1 staff-to-IT ratio, and that gap has widened over the past two years. When IT teams are stretched thin, a GMS implementation can’t assume unlimited technical resources for customization, ongoing maintenance, or user support. This constraint should shape your approach from day one of the project.
The Budget Conversation Nobody Wants to Have
52% of foundations allocate just 1-5% of their operating budget to technology, and that number is shrinking. At the same time, many GMS implementations are scoped as if enterprise-level resources are a given.
Nonprofit Cloud implementations can scale to fit different budget realities, but only if expectations are clear up front. A smaller team may rely heavily on out-of-the-box functionality and standard workflows. A larger foundation might invest in custom development to support more complex processes.
Neither approach is wrong. The problem is planning a Mercedes-level implementation on a Toyota budget and discovering the gap six months in.
Map Your Processes, Then Challenge Them
Every foundation tells us its requirements are unique. And…most of the time they’re right. The harder question is whether those processes should carry forward unchanged into a new system?
During the pandemic, many foundations simplified application and reporting requirements out of necessity. According to the report, 67% streamlined grant applications and 56% streamlined reporting, and many of those changes stuck because they actually worked better. A GMS implementation is often the perfect opportunity to ask whether existing processes still serve the mission or simply reflect habit.
Nonprofit Cloud’s architecture encourages certain patterns: standard objects, automation tools, and reporting structures. That may feel restrictive at first. In practice, it often exposes workarounds or band-aids that are no longer necessary.
Security and Governance Are Where Good Implementations Quietly Fail
42% of foundations with hybrid work models still lack a formal remote access policy, according to the TAG report. That’s alarming when your grants operation lives in the cloud.
Your GMS implementation plan must include:
Clear data governance from the start. Who can see what? Who can edit what? How do you handle confidential information in applications? These aren’t technical questions you can hand to developers. They’re policy decisions that need organizational consensus.
Security policies that reflect your actual workflow. If your program officers need to review applications from anywhere, your security model needs to account for that reality while still protecting sensitive information.
An AI strategy, even if that strategy is “not yet.” 81% of foundations report using AI, but only 30% have policies in place. Salesforce is rapidly integrating AI capabilities into Nonprofit Cloud. You don’t need to use them on day one, but you should have a framework for evaluating them as fast follow-up work, since your data will be normalized and easily accessible.
TAG’s recent focus on responsible AI adoption, including its AI Summit with the Council of Michigan Foundations, its AI Design Studio in the UK, and its on-demand curriculum partnership with NTEN, reflects the sector’s growing recognition that AI governance needs to be proactive, not reactive.
The Integration Question
Here’s where many implementations get messy. Your GMS doesn’t exist in isolation. It needs to connect to your accounting system, your CRM (if separate), your payment processor, your e-signature tool, and probably half a dozen other platforms.
The report reveals that larger foundations (over $1B in assets) tend to use enterprise accounting systems like Sage Intacct or NetSuite, while smaller organizations lean toward QuickBooks or foundation-specific tools. Your implementation needs to account for these integrations from the planning stage, not as an “oh, by the way” six weeks before go-live.
With Nonprofit Cloud, you have options. There are native integration (MuleSoft) and third-party apps from the AppExchange, and some may need custom development. Map your integration requirements early, get realistic estimates for each one, and prioritize ruthlessly.
Building Inclusive, Accessible Systems
One of the most encouraging findings in TAG’s 2025 Impact Report is that 31% of foundations are increasing the scale of their DEI efforts, with another 31% maintaining their commitment. TAG’s Inclusion by Design program, which served 42 professionals in its first year, focuses specifically on advancing inclusive and accessible technology practices.
This matters for your GMS implementation. Accessibility isn’t a nice-to-have feature you add at the end. It needs to be baked into your design from the beginning. Are your workflows accessible to staff with disabilities? Does your system accommodate applicants who use assistive technologies? Have you considered how language barriers might affect both internal users and external grantees?
The foundations that report the highest satisfaction with their technology investments are often the ones that made accessibility and inclusion core design principles.
Implementation Methodology Matters More Than You Think
Most go-lives fall into one of three implementation patterns.
The Big Bang: Shut down the old system on Friday, launch the new system on Monday. This approach is fast, dramatic, and risk-prone.
The Slow Parallel: Run both systems simultaneously for an extended period. It feels safer, but it can quickly become expensive and confusing, with data integrity issues multiplying over time.
The Phased Approach: Launch core grants management functionality. Get real users working in the system. Then build from there (maybe CRM integration, then donor management, then advanced reporting).
For most Nonprofit Cloud implementations, we advocate a phased approach that delivers a minimum viable system to users within 4-6 months, then builds on that foundation in subsequent releases.
Change Management Is Your Secret Weapon
The TAG report shows that most foundations keep database administration in-house (61% of respondents), which is important. The people managing your GMS are your own staff, not external consultants who disappear after go-live.
That makes change management the difference between adoption and frustration. Your implementation plan should include:
A core team of actual users (not just leadership) who can provide real-world feedback throughout the project. The grants manager, who processes 200 applications per cycle, will catch usability issues that never occur to the IT director.
Explicit identification and management of “change killers”. Every organization has predictable blockers: overloaded staff, misaligned incentives, legacy workarounds, fear of loss of control, or “we tried this before” skepticism. Your implementation plan should surface these risks early, name them openly, and actively design mitigations so resistance doesn’t quietly derail adoption after go-live.
Realistic training that goes beyond “here’s where you click.” People need to understand not just how to use Nonprofit Cloud, but why certain workflows exist and how their role fits into the bigger picture.
Support structures for the messy first few months. Office hours, a dedicated Slack channel, quick reference guides, and recorded tutorials. Embrace whatever helps people get unstuck quickly without bothering the already-overstretched IT team.
Measuring Success Beyond Go-Live
Most implementations define success as “the system is live, and people are using it.” That’s a successful start.
Foundations that get the most value from Nonprofit Cloud think about success metrics like:
- Time from application submission to decision (and whether that’s improved)
- Staff hours spent on routine data entry and reporting (and whether that’s decreased)
- Granularity and usefulness of data for decision-making (and whether program officers are actually using reports)
- Grantee satisfaction with the application and reporting process
- Number of manual workarounds and spreadsheets still in use (the goal is zero)
Set baseline metrics before implementation, then track them quarterly. Be prepared to iterate because no system is perfect on day one. The foundations that see the most value are the ones that treat implementation as the beginning of optimization, not the end.
The Nonprofit Cloud Advantage
So why Nonprofit Cloud specifically? The report shows the “all-in-one” Salesforce usage (CRM + grants management + donor portal) growing from 10% to 17% over four years. That’s meaningful.
Nonprofit Cloud offers something most standalone GMS platforms don’t: a unified data model that connects grantmaking, fundraising, program management, and outcomes tracking. For foundations that also cultivate donors, especially community foundations, this integration eliminates duplicate data entry and provides a complete view of relationships.
The platform’s flexibility also means you can start with grants management and expand into other areas as your needs evolve. Maybe you add case management for scholarship programs, or build out outcomes tracking, or implement marketing automation for events. The foundation you’re building during your GMS implementation enables all of that future work.
The Path Forward
The foundations getting the most value from their GMS implementations, Nonprofit Cloud or otherwise, share a common trait. They view the implementation as an organizational change initiative that happens to involve technology, not a technology project that happens to involve people.
Your grants management system should enable your mission, streamline your operations, and free up your team to focus on what matters – supporting the nonprofits doing critical work in your community.
If you’re considering or planning a Nonprofit Cloud implementation, the most important decision you’ll make isn’t about system architecture or data models. It’s about whether you’re ready to commit to the full scope of the transformation (process redesign, change management, ongoing optimization) and to the honest conversations about budget, capacity, and the trade-offs that come with it.
The technology will work. The question is whether your organization is ready to do the hard work of making it work for you.
Fionta partners with foundations to design and implement Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud solutions that reflect each foundation’s unique mission and operational realities. As active members of the Technology Association of Grantmakers community, we stay connected to emerging trends and best practices shaping the future of philanthropy tech.