How to Use Salesforce for Nonprofits: A Complete Guide
On any given day at your nonprofit, your staff and volunteers have their hands full with conducting outreach, planning fundraisers, following up with donors, and more. With so much to do and limited resources to work with, leveraging the right technology can be a game changer for your operational efficiency, program delivery, and overall community impact.
Salesforce for Nonprofits is one impactful software solution to consider investing in, especially for direct-service nonprofits. The platform makes it easy for frontline workers to collect, manage, and reference program participant data, allowing you to make more informed decisions and improve how you provide your services.
In this guide, we’ll walk through everything you need to know to start using these powerful tools, including:
Salesforce for Nonprofits: FAQs
4 Steps to Start Using Salesforce for Nonprofits
How to Use Salesforce for Nonprofits: Best Practices
Salesforce for Nonprofits Support: Deep Why Design’s Process
Over 47,000 nonprofits around the world trust Salesforce to fulfill their data needs. Whether you’re new to Salesforce or you’re looking to learn how to better utilize its offerings, we’ll cover the basics, steps, and best practices to making the most of Salesforce for Nonprofits.
Salesforce for Nonprofits: FAQs
Before you can determine how Salesforce’s tools and capabilities will fit best into your existing strategy and operations, it’s important to familiarize yourself with its core purpose, benefits, and features.
What is Salesforce for Nonprofits?
Salesforce for Nonprofits is a collection of digital tools tailor-made for nonprofits and their specific needs.
Recently, Salesforce released the next generation of its Nonprofit Cloud, a suite of solutions that contains the latest technological innovations for enhancing program delivery and case management. While this powerful new suite of tools is still very new, it offers exciting potential for the future. For today, the tried-and-true choice is the Nonprofit Success Pack, which provides all the comprehensive benefits of Salesforce on a more well-known platform.
What are the benefits of using Salesforce for Nonprofits?
Salesforce for Nonprofits is suited for all types of nonprofits, from housing assistance to arts and culture. Thanks to the wide array of tools and features beneath its umbrella, implementing Salesforce for Nonprofits can bring a host of benefits to your organization, such as:
Centralized data storage and management
Automated tasks and processes
Improved program tracking and outcomes
Real-time reporting and analytics
Enhanced team communication and collaboration
Nonprofits using Salesforce for Nonprofits have seen impactful results, like a 130% increase in total online giving, an additional 400 crisis calls handled every month with no increase in staffing, and a 62% decrease in client intake time.
What are the key features of Salesforce for Nonprofits?
By using Salesforce for Nonprofits, your organization can streamline its activities in a variety of areas with features such as:
A 360-degree view of your constituents. Since people are at the center of everything in Salesforce, your staff can obtain a complete picture of each stakeholder connected to your nonprofit, including program participants, donors, and volunteers. With robust reporting and customizable views, you can easily break down silos to see all the ways your stakeholders engage with your nonprofit.
Program management. Provide a personalized experience for all your program participants throughout their journey with your nonprofit. Salesforce allows you to create templates for easy intake, automate attendance tracking, and build an online space for participants to learn about your program and contact your staff.
Nonprofit operations. Eliminate data silos and unify your systems to obtain a complete view of your nonprofit at all times. Salesforce allows you to seamlessly share data across teams and automate workflows related to data entry and reporting, resulting in a 33% increase in insights-driven decision-making.
Additionally, Salesforce offers solutions to support your nonprofit in any fundraising efforts, marketing campaigns, or grantmaking activities it engages in.
4 Steps to Start Using Salesforce for Nonprofits
Fortunately, getting started with Salesforce for Nonprofits doesn’t require a massive sum of money. In fact, through Salesforce’s Power of Us Program, eligible nonprofit organizations can access 10 free Enterprise Edition licenses, along with deep discounts for additional user licenses and products.
Follow these steps to embark on your Salesforce for Nonprofits journey:
Apply for the Power of Us Program. Many types of charitable organizations are eligible for the Power of Us Program, from health service providers to religious nonprofits. In your application, you’ll need to provide details such as your Tax ID Number and legal documentation verifying your status as a recognized nonprofit within your country.
Explore Salesforce’s Learning Resources. Salesforce shares a variety of resources to prepare your nonprofit for success with its tools. Once you’ve been approved, you’ll gain access to a Standard Success Plan with self-guided educational materials. Depending on your learning preferences, you can also join online Salesforce communities, request individual coaching sessions, or attend live events.
Create a Plan for Migrating Your Data. Facilitate a smooth transition by creating a detailed plan for migrating your data to your Salesforce for Nonprofits system. To do so, you’ll need to outline the scope of your migration, review your existing data to ensure that everything is accurate, and assign specific roles for the process.
Train Your Nonprofit Team. Different members of your team will be using your Salesforce for Nonprofits tools in different ways, depending on their daily tasks and responsibilities. Take the time to identify specific training needs and come up with a plan for equipping everyone with the knowledge they need to succeed. This can include pointing them to relevant Salesforce resources or creating a peer support system.
By taking thoughtful steps in implementing Salesforce for Nonprofits, you’ll be well on your way to leveraging its state-of-the-art tools to store all the necessary information to make practical, data-driven decisions at your organization.
How to Use Salesforce for Nonprofits: Best Practices
Once your team is up and running with Salesforce for Nonprofits, the learning and innovation don’t have to stop there! Tap into the full potential of these solutions by following these basic best practices:
Join Salesforce communities. There’s no need to navigate Salesforce alone. With thousands of organizations using Salesforce for Nonprofits, there are plenty of people willing to share their experiences, provide tips, and help troubleshoot issues. The Nonprofit Hub, for instance, is a public community group for anyone interested in learning how nonprofits are making good use of Salesforce’s tools.
Prioritize data hygiene. Keeping your data accurate and up to date ensures that your team can continue making the most of the Salesforce platform and capabilities. Schedule regular data audits to check for outdated information, duplicated entries, and more. Additionally, create data entry protocols that standardize naming conventions, phone numbers, and other inputted details.
Reach out to experts for tailored support. Salesforce has many powerful features—and every nonprofit will have its own configuration that works best for its needs. That’s why Salesforce’s Nonprofit Readiness Survey recommends having a skilled resource to support your organization in customizing Salesforce for Nonprofits to fit your specific needs and mission.
While there are many experts and implementation partners with specialized Salesforce for Nonprofits knowledge, be sure to find a partner who is ready and willing to not only set up your system but also provide your team members with the guidance they need to understand the tools at their disposal. This is especially important if you have frontline workers who rely on the data in your CRM to provide essential services to the people you serve.
Salesforce for Nonprofits Support: Deep Why Design’s Process
Deep Why Design is a technology firm dedicated to helping your organization maximize the power of Salesforce for Nonprofits in a way that is both affordable and sustainable for your team. We’ve worked with a wide range of use cases and we’ll collaborate with you to create custom solutions for program delivery and high-quality data management. We’ll think beyond just implementation to help your nonprofit create a healthy, manageable data system.
With this in mind, we’ve developed and honed a four-step process for forging excellent end-user experiences with the Salesforce ecosystem:
Education and Mutual Understanding. We take a teaching approach first and foremost—answering questions, addressing gaps in understanding, and providing training to bring initial clarity to your team. We’ll help you identify the best ways to capture the data you need to deliver your services and report on your impact.
Process and Alignment. Next, we figure out whether your Salesforce for Nonprofits tools are set up according to your nonprofit’s needs, expectations, and processes. This includes taking a look at your permissions, sharing rules, and other element configurations.
Additional Tools Exploration. To further improve your Salesforce experience, we’ll take a look at some common tools that your nonprofit might need to set up. Rather than overwhelming your team with a ton of advanced tools and features, we aim to provide your nonprofit with the exact features you need to succeed.
Customization (If Needed). At this point in the process, if we’ve determined that your nonprofit needs additional products in its toolkit, we’ll start evaluating affordable and sustainable options to consider. We’ll consider the expected cost of this customization, as well as its ongoing maintenance, to produce a thoughtful solution that streamlines the daily processes of your program staff.
If you’re a small or mid-sized nonprofit that could use some expert advice on how to use Salesforce for Nonprofits, we offer Office Hours for troubleshooting and Q&As. Or, if you need support for a more complicated issue or project, we have Advanced Office Hours to tackle whatever is on your mind.
Ready to get the most out of your Salesforce system and turn your data into results? Feel free to contact us! We’re happy to discuss your project or goals.
Empowering Your Teams with Salesforce for Nonprofits
Learning how to use and make the most of Salesforce for Nonprofits can be an intensive yet immensely rewarding endeavor for your nonprofit. Whether you’re working with limited staff resources, hoping to improve your program management, or aiming to enhance how your organization uses data, equipping your team with Salesforce’s tools is a massive step in the right direction.
The Salesforce specialists at Deep Why are here to help. Chat with us to discover how we can support your goals and help you leverage Salesforce in a way that works best for you.
If you’d like to learn more about how to streamline your nonprofit’s operations and boost data literacy within your team, check out these additional resources:
The Nonprofit Operations Guide: Early Stage Organizations / Start-Ups. If you’re a budding nonprofit, there’s a lot to consider to solidify your mission and impact in the community. Use this guide to set your organization up for success.
It’s never just a field. Learn all about the importance of applying change management and governance best practices to your data system in this guide.
Practical Data for Nonprofits: Part 1 — A Primer. Improve how you approach and talk about data within your nonprofit by reviewing these four pillars of data literacy.