How to Use Nonprofit Cloud for Fundraising Success

In 2023, charitable giving surged to more than $557 billion in the U.S. However, when adjusted for inflation, this figure illustrates a 2.1% decline in giving. 

Other key charitable giving metrics declined. In 2024, the total number of donors and average donor retention rate fell by 5.3% and 4.6%, respectively. These statistics underscore the need for robust segmentation, personalized communications, enhanced donor stewardship strategies, and engaging fundraising campaigns.

We’ll explore Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud’s fundraising tools and how your organization can use them to engage donors, accurately track and analyze data, and more. 

A Quick Refresher: Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) and Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP)

Salesforce offers two solutions designed for nonprofits:

• Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP): An open-source set of managed packages built on Salesforce. NPSP offers a collection of apps that allow nonprofits to configure the Salesforce platform to meet their needs. 
• Nonprofit Cloud (NPC): An Industry Cloud built into the Salesforce platform that receives dedicated investment from Salesforce and functions seamlessly with other Industry Clouds to provide additional value-adding features and shared common components. 

NPSP isn’t going anywhere, and it’s a reliable tool that many organizations still rely on. However, as a Salesforce core product, Nonprofit Cloud offers more expansive capabilities and better interoperability with other Salesforce products. NPC’s extensive customization options make it ideal for nonprofits with complex or unique needs looking for a future-proof, scalable solution.

What About the Fundraising Tools in NPSP?

If your nonprofit already uses NPSP for fundraising, you may already rely on practical features like:

• Flexible gift entry and fund designation options
• Streamlined management of committed gifts
• Reporting tools
• Soft credits that recognize individuals and organizations that influence donations
• Data hygiene capabilities

NPC offers the same or similar capabilities. While they may be in a different format, many features have been improved or further streamlined. 

For example, NPSP integrates with the Accounting Subledger product, which generates ledger entries for easier reconciliation with financial systems. Salesforce improved this feature for NPCn and now offers it as an out-of-the-box feature to further simplify financial management processes.

The Benefits of Using Nonprofit Cloud for Fundraising

When compared to other popular fundraising platforms, NPC stands out thanks to a few key benefits:

• Salesforce Industry Clouds offers a unified, integrated platform. These Clouds provide access to features developed for other industries but directly relevant to nonprofits. These additional capabilities, combined with the tools on the Salesforce AppExchange, mean your organization does not need to leverage external, disconnected tools. Additionally, all your data will live on a single platform, preventing fragmented or siloed data.
• Improves campaign management. Your nonprofit can plan its fundraising campaigns, set specific goals campaigns and appeal goals, and tie each contribution back to specific appeals, all within NPC. NPC provides Outreach Source Codes, a new Object and feature designed to track attribute donations, allowing for easier reporting on the efficacy of fundraising appeals. This detailed data also enables you to gauge the success of various outreach strategies and fundraising tactics in real-time so you can adjust your campaign if needed.
• Provides more personalized donor engagement. Engaging and retaining donors is more critical than ever, but crafting personalized communications on a large scale is difficult and time-consuming. NPC empowers organizations by automatically generating personalized thank-you messages and tax receipts, providing tailored updates on how funds are used, leveraging self-service portals for donors, and more. These actions strengthen supporter relationships and increase long-term support.
• Offers advanced AI automation and data analytics. Salesforce is known for its robust analytics capabilities, including AI-powered tools like Agentforce and Einstein for Nonprofits. Agentforce enables nonprofits to build AI agents that manage various tasks, from donor engagement to fundraising. This aids understaffed organizations and provides round-the-clock support to donors and beneficiaries. Einstein for Nonprofits leverages AI to generate predictive analytics and metrics based on your nonprofit’s existing data. For example, you can use Einstein to predict whether a supporter could likely be converted into a recurring donor and AgentForce to handle repetitive tasks during conversion.
• It is a scalable, flexible solution. As mentioned, NPC and the Salesforce platform offer many internal tools, apps, and integrations, so your nonprofit won’t need to implement or switch to another fundraising platform as it grows. NPC also allows for extensive customization, so you can adapt to changing needs and objectives.

Remember that these benefits depend on a few factors, such as data quality and your technical expertise and skill level. 

Consider using Fíonta’s Salesforce managed services to stay on top of the latest updates and innovations in the Salesforce ecosystem, monitor your data health, receive helpful training resources, get expert help in impact measurement and reporting, and more. We’ll ensure you’re working with the best solution for your nonprofit and be there to support future initiatives.

Elevate your Fundraising With These NPC Features

Convenient Fundraising Apps

NPC groups fundraising responsibilities into four main categories, each with a corresponding app that ships with the platform:

• Fundraising Strategy: This app enables nonprofit leaders and managers to gain a high-level overview of fundraising efforts and data. Customized reports and dashboards display the most important trends and metrics, provide decision-makers with real-time information on the financial health of the organization
• Donor Engagement: This app allows you to plan, execute, and track fundraising campaigns. You can use outreach source codes to understand how individual marketing appeals and outreach methods perform and create donor segments based on shared characteristics for more targeted, personalized outreach.
• Philanthropy and Partnerships: This app is a good fit for high-touch fundraising, which uses frequent, personalized interactions to cultivate strong relationships with supporters. Leverage Donor Profiles, which provide a detailed overview of the donor’s interests, giving history, and past engagement, and track key opportunities. Additionally, craft standardized task lists known as Action Plans that apply to specific donor segments to ensure consistent treatment.
• Fundraising Operations: Manage essential, day-to-day fundraising tasks here. Efficiently track one-time, recurring, and pledged gifts. Allocate funds to specific programs or causes as specified by donors and generate acknowledgment letters automatically. 

These apps tend to be tailored to different fundraising roles, meaning your staff won’t need to learn how to use all of them to manage their daily tasks efficiently. 

Campaign Management

NPC’s campaign management capabilities allow your organization to:

• Set up and monitor campaigns. In Salesforce, campaigns are used to track outreach efforts. In a fundraising context, your organization would create a new campaign for each fundraiser. For instance, you might make a campaign titled “Giving Tuesday 2025” and specify the campaign type, status, and timeframe. Use the campaign dashboard to review key metrics like donor counts, total gifts, and gift averages.
• Create outreach source codes for granular analysis. Outreach source codes are unique identifiers for your campaign’s outreach methods. For example, you might have source codes for social media, email, and direct mail outreach. These codes reveal the total gifts, revenue, response rates, and other interactions for each appeal, helping you understand the most effective methods.
• Allocate funds. Create a default designation, allocate donations to specific funds, or even split donations between the default designation and particular funds. Some funding is restricted, meaning donors specify how your nonprofit can use it. A donor may contribute to your annual fund but indicate they want the funds to go toward your afterschool program, for example. 
• Segment donors for better results. Create segments of supporters with similar interests or giving behavior to ensure your nonprofit directs relevant outreach and strategies to the right audience. Then, craft and share tailored appeals. Salesforce Data Cloud allows nonprofits to set up data streams with external systems, further enhancing their ability to segment donors with data that doesn’t “live” in Salesforce—a game-changing new development for nonprofits. 

If your organization currently uses NPSP, you’re likely familiar with campaigns. However, campaigns function differently in NPC. 

NPC uses the outreach source codes discussed above rather than relying on campaign hierarchies to chart the performance of different marketing strategies or communication platforms. While this change may take some getting used to, it ultimately produces more specific, accurate campaign and appeal performance metrics.

Log Gifts and Manage Gift Commitments

In Salesforce, Objectsare tables that store details about a set of information. The platform offers pre-built, standard Objects, but administrators can also create custom Objects for unique purposes. These Objects help track funding opportunities, commitments, and gifts and maintain details of each contribution.

Nonprofit Cloud offers a variety of standard Objects related to fundraising that make tracking campaigns and gifts possible. Here are the Objects your team will use to manage gifts, commitments, and more:

• Gift Entry: Gifts logged individually or in batches.
• Gift Commitment: A commitment, such as a pledged donation, made by a donor.
• Gift Commitment Schedule: The schedule for fulfilling a gift commitment.
• Gift Transaction: Details about a completed transaction. 
• Gift Designation: A fund designation that can be assigned to a gift transaction with a Gift Transaction Designation. The Gift Default Designation Object represents where gifts originating from a specific campaign will automatically be allocated.
• Gift Soft Credit: Attributes soft credit to any individuals or organizations that indirectly assisted with securing the gift.
• Gift Tribute: Represents how a gift ties to an individual or organization to track tribute-related information. 

This is far from an exhaustive list of the standard Objects included in NPC. Salesforce typically adds new Objects as part of its regular three-times-a-year releases. 

Administrators can also create custom Objects for niche or organization-specific use cases. However, creating too many custom Objects could make your Salesforce instance incompatible with other products in the ecosystem. Reach out to our team of Salesforce experts to determine the best way to customize NPC for your needs without limiting its functionality.

Automated Workflows

Fundraising campaigns usually include many repetitive tasks, and manually completing each would significantly strain your staff. For example, manually entering a single gift into NPC would require many clicks and different points of entry for data.

NPC offers templated Salesforce Flows, which automate complex business processes. When it comes to fundraising, NPC includes Flows for:

• Gift entry and processing
• Gift commitment processing, commitment scheduling, and recurring gift scheduling
• Certain prospect research tasks

If you’ve implemented NPC, assume these Flows are already active and in use. Administrators can also customize Flows by simply cloning, editing, and activating the existing Flow. 

As with standard Objects, Salesforce often introduces new Flows with regular releases. Work with us to leverage and customize flows to enhance fundraising efficiency. 

Best-in-Class Support

Fast, reliable support promotes deeper donor relationships, builds trust in your organization, and improves retention. To help you do so, NPC now offers a Donor Support Console to make it easier for organizations to respond to donor requests. The console provides a timeline for staff to review requests and take action quickly. Additionally, staff can provide full or partial refunds if requested by donors. 

In October 2024, Salesforce launched Agentforce, a new solution powered by autonomous AI agents that can complete tasks, chat with supporters, and provide real-time support when staff can’t. Agentforce combines with Nonprofit Cloud to bring the power of these sophisticated agents to your organization. Automate personalized communications, train agents to reply to “Where is my donation going?” and even create donor briefs tailored to donors’ interests to boost retention and engagement.

Additional Resources

Salesforce releases new Objects, fields, Flows, and more three times per year. While your nonprofit may not have a use case for every update, following these releases closely is essential to ensure you get the most out of the Salesforce platform. Additionally, look for opportunities to improve efficiency using automation or AI and ways to customize NPC to your nonprofit’s needs.

Our team of experts at Fíonta can provide your organization with innovative, tailored solutions that support your mission and address your unique needs and goals. With more than a decade of experience as Salesforce consultants focused on nonprofits, we’re uniquely equipped to help you unlock the full potential of your solution. Contact us today to learn more.

Discover more about Salesforce solutions for nonprofits by exploring these additional resources:

• How to get started and grow with Salesforce for Nonprofits. Get your questions about Salesforce for Nonprofits answered, and look at our top client case studies.
• How to transition from Salesforce NPSP to Nonprofit Cloud. Demystify this process and determine whether making the switch is right for your organization.
• Your handbook to Salesforce implementation for nonprofits. For nonprofits that don’t already use the Salesforce CRM, see the implementation process here. 

Whether you’re ready to implement Salesforce, need help maximizing your fundraising success, or want to deeply engage donors, Fíonta is here to help. Contact us today!