Nonprofit organizations like yours are crucial in serving their communities, and effective program management is essential for achieving your goals. Using tools like Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) and Nonprofit Cloud (NPC), you can enhance your organization’s approach to program management to streamline operations, collect and leverage data, and fulfill your mission.
We’ll explore the basics of program management, the program management features Salesforce NPC offers, and how Salesforce can help you achieve your organizational goals.
Nonprofit Program Management FAQs
What Is Program Management?
Program management involves coordinating multiple organizational projects to achieve specific goals and objectives. In the nonprofit sector, these projects are typically aligned with the organization’s mission and values.
Don’t confuse project management with program management! While project management focuses on completing individual tasks within a defined timeline, program management considers the bigger picture of aligning various projects with organizational strategy.
What Does a Program Manager Do?
Nonprofit program managers ensure the organization’s programs run efficiently and effectively. They aim to make the most significant impact on the community while efficiently managing resources. Program managers coordinate various aspects of your programs, check in with each team to ensure their work goes smoothly, and ensure the individual pieces of your programs come together.
Program managers benefit from using software like Salesforce to monitor their complex, time-sensitive responsibilities. Using Salesforce NPSP and NPC, which we’ll discuss next, program managers quickly gain an overview of how each project is progressing, enabling them to adjust timelines, understand individual teams’ needs, and keep programs on schedule.
What Are the Best Nonprofit Program Management Tools?
Select a program management tool that integrates seamlessly with your CRM for best results. Both NPSP and NPC offer program management capabilities.
NPSP is a collection of apps used to configure the Salesforce CRM to align with nonprofit needs. In addition to program management tools, NPSP can help you manage fundraisers, donor data, volunteers, grants, and more.
NPC is a specialized suite of Salesforce applications tailored specifically for nonprofit organizations. This solution is an Industry Cloud that integrates seamlessly with other Clouds and offers the thrice-yearly new releases you’ve come to expect from NPSP.
Key features and aspects of Salesforce NPC include:
- Supporter relationship management
- Fundraising and donor management
- Grantmaking
- Outcome management
- Program and case management
- Marketing and engagement
- Reporting and analytics
As one of the most comprehensive tools for nonprofits, NPC adheres to the same high standards of data security and compliance trusted by companies worldwide. These rigorous standards are crucial for nonprofits that handle sensitive data, helping you strengthen trust with donors and boost your reputation.
What Are the Key Components of Nonprofit Program Management?
Program management software like Salesforce NPSP and NPC provides a platform for program managers to plan, coordinate, and analyze each part of a large-scale program. Here is a breakdown of how these tools can fulfill the key aspects of program management:
- Comprehensive planning: Robust planning features, like service delivery schedules and appointment trackers, enable nonprofits to develop comprehensive program plans that consider all factors, stakeholders, timelines, and budgets. NPC’s Program Management Module (PMM) aligns programs with organizational strategy.
- Performance metrics and evaluation: NPSP and NPC offer advanced reporting and analytics capabilities, allowing nonprofits to establish performance metrics and measure the success of their programs. These tools enable organizations to gather stakeholders’ feedback and track key metrics such as the number of people served or impacted by programs. Nonprofits use this data to evaluate program effectiveness and make necessary adjustments for continuous improvement.
- Stakeholder collaboration: Program management is collaborative, and NPSP and NPC emphasize stakeholder engagement. These tools facilitate effective communication between program managers, staff, volunteers, and donors. Increase the chances of program success by using these platforms to ensure alignment among your stakeholders, clarify responsibilities, and foster efficient collaboration.
- Resource allocation: Nonprofit program management often suffers from limited resources. Fortunately, NPSP and NPC enable organizations to efficiently track and manage funding, volunteers, and other critical resources. NPC provides additional capabilities to streamline data collection and analysis, enabling nonprofits to make informed decisions about resource allocation.
These program management-oriented features alone make Salesforce one of the top nonprofit CRMs. With additional Clouds and native apps, nonprofits can customize their Salesforce instance to create a program management workflow adapted to their needs.
Key Features of Salesforce NPC Program Management
NPC’s program management capabilities offer a variety of innovative features to assist with core program management activities. Let’s dive deeper into the following features:
Enhanced Tracking and Scheduling
These sophisticated tracking and benefit scheduling features enable nonprofits to create detailed program structures, schedule benefit sessions, manage resources, and deliver programs efficiently and effectively. For example, a literacy nonprofit might use these features to schedule various ESL class sessions for adult refugees, enhancing its program’s organization and effectiveness.
Get a comprehensive view of benefit disbursements, program enrollments, and more in the program management command center dashboard, pictured below.
Participant Enrollment and Management
This feature streamlines program enrollments and handles planned and ad-hoc attendances, ensuring flexibility and complete program oversight.
For example, a youth engagement organization can use this feature to manage the entire program participant life cycle. The screenshot below illustrates how the organization might track participants from initial enrollment to program graduation. Nonprofits can also note key milestones and activities, such as group attendance and workshop walk-ins, and engagement activities like emails, meetings, and phone calls associated with their program participation.
Insight Aggregation and Reporting
Aggregating insights from programs, participants, and benefit disbursements provides a robust data set for organizational reporting, and NPC makes this possible. Nonprofits can utilize this data for in-depth analysis and reporting, enabling them to audit their program efficacy and showcase their programs’ impact to donors and stakeholders with comprehensive data.
Overcome Program Management Challenges with Salesforce
Between lower budgets and staffing capacity, managing multiple programs with varied goals and timelines can be challenging for nonprofits. Program managers must prioritize effective communication between stakeholders at all levels while implementing streamlined data collection and analysis systems.
NPS offers functionalities to help nonprofits overcome these challenges and optimize their program management processes, such as:
- Tracking participant progress. Track participants’ progress toward their goals and connect them to relevant programs. For example, a mental health-focused nonprofit could use this feature to track patient treatments and outcomes, ensuring each patient receives the care and follow-up needed. The screenshot below illustrates how this nonprofit can track the patient’s progress.
- Measuring program effectiveness. Measure the effectiveness of your programs with real-time reporting and visualizations. An environmental organization might use these reporting features to track the success of its conservation initiatives, providing tangible evidence of its impact. Using NPC outcome and program management features extends Salesforce’s standard reporting capabilities by tying program data to organizational indicators.
- Handling complex data models. Tracking programs in a CRM requires a robust data model to represent the various components, such as participants, program enrollments, and benefits scheduled and disbursed. Below is a graphic of NPC’s program management data model:
While NPC program management provides features to ensure effective navigation and usage, nonprofits must map their existing and future state processes to the data model before implementation to maximize its benefits. This is why carefully choosing a seasoned implementation partner, like Fíonta, makes all the difference.
The Long-Term Importance of Program Management
Effective program management ensures resources are allocated efficiently, goals are met on time and within budget, stakeholders’ expectations are satisfied, and nonprofits can achieve their missions. This increases program delivery effectiveness, allowing organizations to serve more people with limited resources.
Solutions like NPC and NPSP provide nonprofits with the tools to drive positive change, better serve their communities, and achieve mission-driven objectives. Using Salesforce, nonprofits can:
- Address program management challenges
- Enhance collaboration
- Optimize resource allocation
- Measure program impact effectively
By capturing data related to program outcomes and utilizing NPC’s robust reporting capabilities, organizations can demonstrate their effectiveness to funders and attract additional funding, strengthening their sustainability and expanding their reach.
Wrapping Up
Effective nonprofit program management allows your organization to complete initiatives and successfully serve your community. With program management tools from Salesforce, nonprofits can take a technology-backed approach, easing the burden on program managers and allocating resources more effectively than before.
To learn more about how to use Salesforce to manage your nonprofit, explore these additional resources:
- What You Need to Know About Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud. Want to dig deeper into NPC’s capabilities? Check out this comprehensive guide.
- How to Use Nonprofit Cloud for Fundraising Success. Uncover ways to enhance fundraising and better support your mission with Salesforce NPC.
- How to Leverage Agentforce for Nonprofits and Associations. Learn the basics of this new offering from Salesforce, how to use it, and the benefits Agentforce offers your nonprofit.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud empowers nonprofits to manage, report on, and measure their programs more effectively. Contact Fíonta today to learn how NPSP and Nonprofit Cloud can support your organization’s unique program management needs.