Salesforce has existed for 25 years, and the CRM system provider has served nonprofits for nearly as long. Its long history of helping nonprofits further their missions includes the Power of Us program, Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), and, most recently, Nonprofit Cloud. The last year has seen many exciting updates for these nonprofit technologies.
Whether your nonprofit already uses Salesforce or is considering implementing this powerful system, taking advantage of its benefits and functionalities is key. This guide explores Salesforce basics, top features, and case studies from organizations that benefit from Salesforce for Nonprofits. Let’s get started.
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) system. The software helps businesses, nonprofits, associations, and other organizations manage and analyze data, track interactions with customers and supporters, provide seamless experiences, increase revenue, and more.
Salesforce is consistently ranked as the #1 CRM provider by the International Data Corporation (IDC), and it’s used by many of the top companies in the world, including Amazon Web Services and Walmart.
What is Salesforce for Nonprofits?
More than 54,000 nonprofit organizations are powered by the Salesforce CRM. To support these organizations, Salesforce offers the technology needed to maximize nonprofits’ impact, capacity to enact change, and revenue. These benefits are delivered through:
- Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) is a series of managed packages installed on Salesforce Enterprise Edition that allows nonprofits to use the platform for fundraising, managing donor relationships, delivering programming, and more.
- Nonprofit Cloud is a set of nonprofit-specific solutions built on the Salesforce core. It includes customizable solutions for program management, fundraising, grantmaking, and more.
NPSP is a reliable tool for thousands of nonprofits. However, Nonprofit Cloud offers more flexibility, functionality, and capacity than NPSP.
As a core product, Nonprofit Cloud receives regular updates from Salesforce. It’s also built on the Industry Data Model, meaning that Nonprofit Cloud users can easily access and use tools from other Industry Clouds, such as the Financial Services Cloud.
Additionally, Nonprofit Cloud users can take advantage of the dozens of Common Features shared among the Industry Clouds, such as the OmniStudio and Actionable Relationship Center (ARC). With the level of flexibility and customization Nonprofit Cloud offers, this system is the future-safe choice for nonprofits looking for a scalable solution that can grow with them.
Does Salesforce offer nonprofit pricing?
Yes. Salesforce offers discounted software to nonprofit organizations and educational institutions through its Power of Us program. Before applying, identify a Salesforce partner who can help you navigate the process and implement your discounted Salesforce products.
How long does it take to get started?
Timelines for implementing Salesforce will vary depending on complexity, the number of systems and business units, the amount of data, and other factors.
To determine the scope and length of your project, reach out to a consultant. These professionals ensure the implementation process runs smoothly, keep your data secure during migration, and conduct testing to ensure the solution meets your needs.
Why should your organization choose Salesforce for Nonprofits?
Getting started with a new system can be daunting, and implementing Salesforce can require a significant amount of time and resources. However, the benefits this solution affords your nonprofit over time are well worth the initial investment.
Some of the top advantages of using Salesforce are that:
- Nonprofit Cloud is built for nonprofits. The system’s data model, features, and functionalities are designed specifically for nonprofit organizations. This means that while customization is possible, it isn’t required to make the solution fit nonprofit needs.
- The platform is established and serves thousands of organizations. Such widespread adoption speaks for Salesforce’s reliability and stability. Its large user base also ensures Salesforce has a wealth of resources that can be used to support new users, enhance flexibility, and foster continuous improvement.
- Its capabilities constantly expand. Core products, like Nonprofit Cloud, receive three updates per year in the spring, summer, and winter. These updates introduce new features and functionalities to the platform to enhance productivity, user experience, security, and more. For example, the Summer ‘24 release will bring new fundraising tools to Nonprofit Cloud, including custom giving scores and gift receipts.
- It offers extensive customization options. Customize your donor database, reports, and dashboards to fit your nonprofit’s needs. Add the Fields, Objects, and other helpful elements to your database to better understand donors. Use and configure more than 70 reports and dashboards crafted for nonprofits, such as LYBUNT and projection reports.
- Personalization is easy. Personalized marketing and user experiences are key to engaging and retaining your supporters. Tools like Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE), formerly Pardot, help nonprofits generate and nurture leads through automated outreach and targeted marketing campaigns. The tool improves the visibility of donor data, qualifies leads, transforms data into actionable insights, and leverages AI to yield personalized, data-backed communications.
- It has stringent security measures in place. Your CRM contains sensitive data about your organization and its supporters that must be protected. While other nonprofit CRMs have failed to use the proper safeguards to protect users’ data, Salesforce ensures data stored on its platform remains secure. The platform employs stringent security measures, including strengthened passwords, multi-factor authentication (MFA), advanced security settings, and no unnecessary data storage (i.e., cookies).
- There are robust communities for users. The Salesforce ecosystem comprises Salesforce employees and leaders, customers, and partners (certified experts who assist customers with Salesforce products). This ecosystem forms a community that helps users find the support needed to maximize the platform. Additionally, the Salesforce Trailhead contains learning paths users can follow to explore topics and gain software-related skills.
You’ll also gain access to the Salesforce AppExchange, a marketplace of apps, components, and experts that can further expand the capabilities of your Salesforce instance.
These solutions are often built by third parties to solve specific concerns like payment processing or sourcing matching gifts. Salesforce-native apps are built directly on the platform, whereas non-native apps are built outside of Salesforce and use integrations to connect with the CRM.
What are the top Salesforce features?
Nonprofit Success Pack
As a set of managed packages, NPSP contains a variety of fundraising, constituent, donor, and program management tools. Some of its capabilities include:
- Tracking individual donor information and managing households
- Managing and tracking donations, including recurring and in-kind gifts
- Defining supporters’ engagement levels
- Engaging with major donors and tracking interactions
- Creating volunteer profiles and recording volunteer metrics
- Using custom reports to analyze data
NPSP can offer more specialized tools depending on your needs, and it’s particularly flexible as an open-source package. The package is designed to help your nonprofit organize its data consistently and meaningfully to foster better fundraising and marketing outcomes and improve service delivery.
Nonprofit Cloud
Nonprofit Cloud is core to the Salesforce platform, as is NPSP. It is a different product with new core features and technologies available.
Nonprofit Cloud is designed to adapt with and scale alongside your nonprofit as you grow. You won’t need to upgrade or switch solutions in the future, eliminating future implementation costs.
To make this possible, Nonprofit Cloud offers a variety of practical features in the following areas:
- Fundraising: Seamlessly manage fundraising operations for both mass-market and high-touch campaigns. Fundraising staff can leverage tools for gift entry and donation commitments (e.g., recurring, planned, or pledged gifts). Major gift officers can build detailed donor profiles and manage their portfolios. Segmentation capabilities and source codes make launching targeted messages during mass-market fundraisers and tracking marketing outcomes possible.
- Programs: Improve your program’s efficiency and deliver more benefits to beneficiaries. Adequately plan, deliver, and track program impact to facilitate meaningful improvement in the future. Case management tools provide your caseworkers with a 360-degree view of each participant, driving quality, personalized experiences.
- Outcome management: Connect your program data with Outcome Management to track your nonprofit’s impact easily. Set a goal, define your strategy, and observe as you progress toward the target. Adjust your approach as needed to achieve your goals and remain accountable to your mission. Additionally, Outcome Management has a built-in assessment tool to gather and analyze feedback from program participants.
- Grantmaking: This solution is designed for foundations that provide resources to other nonprofits or individuals. It contains grantmaking tools you need to manage applications, provide positive experiences to grant recipients, and maximize your impact. Additionally, you can access Nonprofit Cloud’s fundraising, programs, and outcome management features.
- AI: Nonprofit Cloud offers a range of AI-powered tools through its integration with the Einstein 1 generative AI platform. The new Einstein Summaries feature will help organizations gain a deeper understanding of their programs, relationships with top donors, ways to streamline grant review, and more.
- Data: Data Cloud for Nonprofits merges both structured and unstructured data from various sources into one standardized database. This gives nonprofits a comprehensive view of all stakeholders, helping them better understand program and campaign performance and operational efficiency.
Nonprofit Cloud also contains the common components available to all Industry Clouds. Other Industry Cloud tools can help nonprofits use data to better serve and engage donors, members, and beneficiaries. This makes Nonprofit Cloud a powerful, single source of truth for your nonprofit management needs and keeps data consolidated on one platform.
How does Salesforce work for nonprofits?
Salesforce works differently for every nonprofit, helping to solve organization-specific challenges and streamline unique workflows.
At Fíonta, we’ve worked with hundreds of nonprofits, foundations, and associations to implement and tailor Salesforce solutions to organizational needs. The powerful platform is paired with our award-winning digital services including user experience and user interface design, Salesforce and CMS integration, search engine optimization, and more.
Our years of experience driving digital transformation for our clients have allowed us to hone our Salesforce knowledge and skills to deliver solutions, maximize efficiency, and enhance relationships with supporters. The following case studies highlight how our services benefit real organizations.
Amputee Coalition
The Amputee Coalition (AC) is a nonprofit organization that supports, educates, and advocates for those impacted by limb loss. AC worked with Fíonta to upgrade its 12-year-old Salesforce instance to one that addressed and served its current needs.
AC’s previous Salesforce instance introduced pain points and slowdowns such as:
- Many integrations and customizations, resulting in fundraising and event management functionality living in third-party tools. This added unnecessary complexity to the solution.
- Lost revenue caused by inefficient marketing and outreach methods. Engagement efforts were hindered because AC could not leverage the standard Salesforce functionalities.
- Inaccurate, duplicated data which made analysis and automation difficult.
To overcome these challenges, Fíonta helped AC implement Nonprofit Cloud. In addition to cleaning and migrating AC’s data to the new solution, Fíonta translated custom object data to standard objects to allow AC to access and leverage standard Salesforce capabilities.
As a result, AC now saves time and funding with an up-to-date system that compliments its organizational processes.
Read the full Amputee Coalition case study.
Prison Fellowship International
Prison Fellowship International’s (PFI) mission is to use its global network of ministry partners to improve the lives of prisoners, their family members, and victims of crime. Before working with Fíonta, PFI lacked a centralized system for program management and struggled with slow communications between teams. This led to inefficient program tracking, fragmented data, and connectivity issues for field workers.
Fíonta started by implementing the Nonprofit Cloud Program Management Module paired with a tool called TaroWorks to solve the lack of internet access. Nonprofit Cloud aided in streamlining clunky workflows, organizing data collection, and syncing data offline to connect remote workers with the international office.
Currently, PFI can easily and accurately report its data, and its teams are connected by seamless communication. Data provides a comprehensive overview of the work PFI does to rehabilitate prisoners and assist them with integrating into society. These findings are key, helping PFI demonstrate program efficacy and locate opportunities for growth.
Read the full Prison Fellowship International case study.
Mental Health America
Mental Health America (MFA) aims to advance the mental health and well-being of those living in the US by offering mental health education, advocacy, services, and more. MHA previously used a customized version of the Luminate CRM. This system was not serving MHA’s needs and was nearing its end-of-support date.
MHA turned to Fíonta for expert assistance with:
- Outdated systems: MHA’s Luminate technology would become obsolete, did not scale with the organization, and was not a cost-effective solution, prompting MHA to implement a new platform.
- Poor user adoption of past technology: MHA’s staff worked around its previous solution rather than employing it, leading to a poor ROI.
- Lack of clean data: The legacy system did not promote data hygiene, meaning that MHA’s data became duplicated, inconsistent, and inaccurate. Over time, this interfered with stakeholder engagement as MHA struggled to prove its impact.
Fíonta conducted a thorough discovery process to identify MHA’s pain points and implemented NPSP. The Salesforce instance was configured to align with MHA’s business practices, external communications, stakeholder engagement, and management. Integrations with third-party systems enhanced processes like fundraising.
Fíonta ensured data was clean before migration and trained staff to promote system adoption and maintain data integrity.
Read the full Mental Health America case study.
Wrapping up
Salesforce for Nonprofits gives social good organizations the power to manage their data, donors, and operations efficiently to maximize impact. Gaining a deeper understanding of supporters, workflows, and programming empowers nonprofits to make data-backed decisions that drive success and further missions.
To implement or enhance your Salesforce for Nonprofits solution, it’s essential to work with an expert. Reach out to our team of Salesforce experts to learn more about how Fíonta can help you get started and make the most of your investment.