October 30, 2024 | Ryan Sears

Nonprofits have a unique challenge: balancing their mission with the complexity of managing resources, donors, and programs.

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud makes this easier by offering an integrated platform that brings all your operations into one place.

From tracking relationships to measuring the impact of your initiatives, it turns complex processes into manageable workflows.

As your nonprofit grows, the platform grows with you empowering your team to focus on what matters most: making a difference.

What is Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud?

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud is the all-in-one platform nonprofits need to fund, deliver, and measure their impact.

It helps organizations manage every aspect of their mission by providing a unified system to handle donor relationships, program management, and service delivery.

Salesforce for Nonprofits, with its built-in data-driven tools, helps make informed decisions, automate tasks, and track success, all while keeping the organization’s data secure.

How Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud goes beyond CRM

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud is a CRM built for the unique needs of nonprofits.

It brings together data from across your organization, helping your teams collaborate more effectively and respond to changing needs faster.

And the best part about this CRM? Better and streamlined management leads to better donor engagement and improves program outcomes. 93% of nonprofits report a positive ROI after switching to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud CRM.

Core Modules and Features of Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

At the heart of Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud are tools that allow nonprofits to manage their relationships, programs, and data cloud seamlessly.

Whether you’re organizing donor campaigns, tracking program impact, or coordinating services, this data model makes it easy for nonprofits to drive mission outcomes with less complexity.

 

Constituent management

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud’s constituent management tools replace the chaos of spreadsheets with a streamlined system.

It provides a 360-degree view of all your nonprofit’s relationships and partners, making it easy to track every interaction and tailor your communications.

• Contact management: Track and manage constituent history, preferences, and interactions in one centralized place
• Activity tracking: Log every communication and activity to keep detailed records of interactions
• Household and organization accounts: Manage relationships at both individual and organizational levels, keeping addresses and contacts updated
• Gift transactions: Easily track gift transactions, apply designations, and even process refunds while crediting the right influence

Fundraising Management

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud for Fundraising (NPC Fundraising) is a cloud-based solution that helps nonprofits manage their funds and engage with donors.

• Raise funds: Manage various types of fundraising, from major gifts to mass market efforts and grants
• Engage donors: Track and manage interactions with major donors, grantmakers, and planned givers to strengthen relationships
• Measure impact: Gain a top-level view of fundraising activity with data-driven insights for better decision-making
• Manage campaigns: Create, track, and manage campaigns to ensure they reach their goals
• Donor support: Use the Donor Support console to respond to donor requests quickly and efficiently

Also read: Top strategies for campaign management at nonprofits

Mass-market fundraising

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud simplifies mass-market fundraising by providing tools to reach a large group of donors with personalized appeals and updates.

With segmentation, fundraisers can divide their donor base into targeted groups for more effective communication.

Reporting features allow fundraisers to generate detailed reports on campaign performance, and tracking tools help monitor progress, ensuring continuous improvement in fundraising efforts.

Program and Case Management

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud enables nonprofits to deliver programs and services with ease.

Whether you’re working with individuals or families, the platform offers tools to manage cases, track outcomes, and connect people to the services they need.

Case Management

Your case managers can organize their day and manage client relationships with features for tracking intakes, referrals, clients, case plans, and assessments.

The referral management tool simplifies matching individuals with the right services, ensuring timely support.

Case managers can also create care plans, refer clients to service providers, and track attendance and benefits.

Additionally, data insights allow case managers to measure the impact of their interventions and adjust strategies for better outcomes.

Case Management with Experience Cloud

Salesforce Experience Cloud helps nonprofits create portals that allow individuals to access services, apply for programs, and track their case progress.

With Experience Cloud, case managers can share real-time updates with participants, offering a personalized user experience.

This platform also supports collaboration with external partners, ensuring everyone involved in the case has the information they need to drive better outcomes.

Program Management Module (PMM)

Track your program engagements, service deliveries, service schedules, attendance, and more data about clients, volunteers, and cohorts.

Your case managers can use it to add participants to programs that best serve them while monitoring progress to ensure goals are met.

Check out the entire suite of services provided by Aptaria.

Greater impact with outcome management

Outcome management in Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud helps nonprofits define, track, and evaluate the impact of their programs.

By aligning their operations with their mission, nonprofits can measure whether their efforts are creating the intended social impact.

Nonprofits can also adjust programs in real time, responding to feedback loops and adapting to changing circumstances, to ensure continuous optimization for better outcomes.

Key metrics to track in outcome management

Outcome management helps a variety of nonprofits to customize their metrics and feedback systems. Organizations can refine their strategies and stay on course to achieve their mission, even as challenges evolve.

• Program effectiveness: Monitor the progress of programs and services against your organization’s mission goals, ensuring every initiative delivers impact
• Participant progress: Track individual achievements within programs, ensuring participants meet key milestones and objectives
• Resource allocation: Evaluate how effectively your nonprofit is using resources—time, money, and personnel—toward achieving impact
• Outcomes achieved: Measure long-term outcomes to assess whether programs are meeting their broader social or environmental goals

The Salesforce NPC toolkit

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud offers a powerful toolkit designed to automate time-consuming tasks and streamline processes.

With components like OmniStudio, Action Plans, and the Actionable Relationship Center (ARC), organizations can reduce administrative burdens and focus on achieving their mission.

OmniStudio

OmniStudio is a set of tools that helps nonprofits automate paper-based processes. It includes features like Action Plans and the Business Rules Engine, enabling users to automate intake processes and make quicker, data-driven decisions.

Action Plans

Action Plans allow users to define, prioritize, and assign tasks within a business process. Each task can have a priority level, due date, and a responsible team member, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

Business Rules Engine

This engine automates complex decision-making by using expression sets, decision matrices, and decision tables. Nonprofits can streamline workflows by automating routine decisions, freeing up time for more strategic tasks.

Actionable Relationship Center (ARC)

ARC provides a single view of all relationship data, giving nonprofits clear visibility into how constituents, donors, and volunteers are connected.

With ARC, users can create and edit relationships, build graphs using standard and custom objects, and customize node names and fields.

It simplifies relationship tracking, allowing nonprofits to create and manage records effortlessly while visualizing connections across their organization.

Grant management in Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud streamlines the complex process of grant management into a smooth operation that works for both funders and applicants.

At its core, you’ll find a robust portal where grant-seekers can discover opportunities, submit applications, and monitor their status in real-time. External reviewers can jump in too, making collaboration seamless.

The platform’s muscle lies in its verification toolkit – think document checklists and compliance tracking that keep everything in check. Plus, smart automation handles the tedious tasks, freeing your team to focus on what matters most.

Salesforce flows let you customize every step. And when it comes to evaluating applications or managing renewals, you’ve got all the tools to make informed decisions and track long-term commitments.

It’s a complete overhaul of how nonprofits handle their grant programs, from first contact to final report.

Scaling your impact with grantmaking

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud for grantmaking goes beyond basic grant management by enabling data-driven insights across your entire operation.
Break down grant allocation assessments by program, activity, or region to understand where your funding creates the most impact.
For organizations scaling their operations, the platform efficiently handles large volumes of applications without compromising on quality or oversight. Also, it helps you track long-term outcomes systematically, giving you the metrics needed to refine future funding strategies.
This comprehensive approach shifts grant management from a transaction-focused process to an insight-driven program that demonstrates clear impact and accountability.

Check our learning and resource center for an in-depth understanding of Salesforce for nonprofits.

Customizing Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud for your needs

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud’s flexibility makes it adaptable for nonprofits of any size or mission.

Whether you’re a small community organization or a large international nonprofit, the platform can be tailored to suit your specific requirements.

Understand your goals first

Before jumping into customization, outline your organization’s core goals and the data you need to track. By aligning Salesforce with your mission from the beginning, you can avoid unnecessary configurations later.

Scale features as you grow

Start with the essentials, and add advanced features like automation and outcome tracking as your organization scales. Salesforce’s modular design lets you expand without overwhelming your team with unnecessary features early on.

Customize for donor segmentation

Tailor your donor management system to track specific donor segments. Customize fields to store detailed donor data for more personalized outreach and engagement efforts.

Integrate with existing tools

Ensure Salesforce integrates seamlessly with other tools your nonprofit already uses, such as accounting software, communication platforms, or volunteer management systems. This creates a centralized hub for all your data.

Automate workflows

Set up automated workflows for routine tasks like sending thank-you emails to donors or managing event registrations. Automation reduces manual effort, freeing up time for mission-critical activities.

Why partner with a Salesforce consultant for customization?

A certified Salesforce consulting partner like Aptaria can ensure your Nonprofit Cloud setup aligns with your organization’s unique needs.

With over a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector, Aptaria custom-builds Salesforce applications to fit your specific workflows and goals.

This guarantees the platform is tailored to work for your team, optimizing donor management, program delivery, and fundraising strategies. Beyond implementation, Aptaria provides ongoing support to help you scale as your nonprofit grows.

Take a look at all the industries that Aptaria serves.

Common pitfalls to avoid

While Salesforce solutions offer immense potential, nonprofits can run into challenges during implementation if the platform isn’t set up properly.

• Over-customization: Trying to customize every detail can lead to an overly complex system that’s hard to manage. Focus on essential features first, and scale customization as needed
• Ignoring change management: Underestimating the cultural shifts that come with new technology can cause user adoption issues
• Failing to optimize post-launch: The platform can become stagnant without ongoing updates and adjustments. Regular optimization is key to long-term success

Setting your nonprofit up for long-term success

Implementing Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud is about laying the foundation for sustainable growth and deeper impact.

It’s crucial to approach implementation with a mission-first mindset to benefit from this powerful and versatile platform. Customize the platform to your unique needs, focus on aligning technology with your goals, and always be ready to adapt.

Partnering with experts like Aptaria ensures you get the most out of your investment. From tailoring your system to ongoing support, a certified Salesforce partner can help you unlock the full potential of the Nonprofit Cloud.

As your nonprofit evolves, so should your technology. The key to long-term success lies in staying agile, continuously optimizing the platform, and letting data guide your decision-making.

Start now by assessing your current processes, setting clear goals, and envisioning how Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud can empower your nonprofit to achieve its mission more effectively. Reach out if you require any consultation or support.

With the right tools and a thoughtful approach, you’ll be well on your way to making a greater impact.

 

FAQs

1. Why should nonprofits use Salesforce?
   Salesforce helps nonprofits streamline operations, manage donor relationships, automate repetitive tasks, and track program outcomes—all in one platform. It provides a 360-degree view of constituents and makes data-driven decisions easier, enabling nonprofits to focus more on their mission.
2. What is the difference between Sales Cloud and Nonprofit Cloud?
   Sales Cloud is designed for businesses to manage sales and customer relationships, while Nonprofit Cloud is tailored for nonprofits, focusing on donor management, fundraising, and program tracking.
3. How does Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud improve donor engagement?
   Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud offers tools to segment donors, personalize communication, and track engagement, helping nonprofits build long-lasting relationships and increase donor retention.