Salesforce for Nonprofits: Top Features and Incentives

The foundation of every nonprofit is the people in the organization. The founders, the employees, and the volunteers who keep the operations running smoothly on a day-to-day basis. But what keeps the organization running internally? 

In today’s blog, we will go over why Salesforce is the number one choice for nonprofits all over the world, as well as the best features they offer to nonprofits.

Why is Salesforce so Valuable for Nonprofits?

There are many reasons why Salesforce is the number one choice for nonprofits. We’re going to dive into the top three reasons why Salesforce is so beneficial to nonprofits around the world. Let’s dive in.

Cost: The Power of Us Program

Cost is an important factor for every business when deciding which platform to run their business on. But for nonprofits, cost is an even bigger consideration. Salesforce gives back with the “Power of Us Program,” providing 10 licenses to nonprofits when they switch to the Platform. Nonprofits are given Salesforce Enterprise licenses, which usually cost $125 per month. These nonprofits end up saving nearly $15,000 a year! While this doesn’t mean the entire system comes free, a huge chunk of it comes discounted. Salesforce also offers discounts on additional products and adding extra users. Additionally, many of the third-party apps in the AppExchange also offer nonprofit discounts with the Power of Us Program. Since many nonprofits have limited budgets and staff, this is a major benefit.

All Your Data in One Place

With Salesforce, you have the ability to track, record, and dive into all the data empowering your organization to make more informed decisions. From insight and reporting on fundraising efforts to tracking the progress of grant requests, all your information and activities are in one place, one system.  This data is also highly visible and accessible to your team wherever and whenever they need it. You can:

• Run reports on engagement
• See which of your campaigns are the most successful
• Assign employees to different activities, donors, and, programs to avoid duplicated efforts
• Get a 360-degree view of your whole organization
• And more! 

No more separate Excel spreadsheets, Dropbox folders, or waiting for an employee to return to the office so you can get an update on that letter of intent he sent out. It’s all on the same platform – no more waiting or uncertainties!

Build Your Own Community

Self-service, personal involvement, and community engagement are expectations now. Web-based communities are a powerful tool for organizations to expand their effective reach. Salesforce Community Cloud allows nonprofits to do just that! A few examples of how nonprofits can utilize this tool are below: 

• A portal to connect your donors with giving opportunities and event information
• A place for your volunteers to sign-up and share upcoming campaigns 
• A one-stop-site for your beneficiaries to enroll in your services 
• And more!

With your branding, messaging, and your functionality, Salesforce Community Cloud makes engagement easier than ever. 

You can enable your communities to share information and files, collaborate on projects, answer each other’s questions, plan events, and more all while on your mobile phone. It’s easy to restrict communities to specific spaces for donors, staff, volunteers, and beneficiaries. 

Top Features of Salesforce for Nonprofits

Salesforce also offers nonprofits a variety of features on their platform. One of the main features offered to nonprofits is their Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). NPSP is an open-source add-on app to Salesforce with pre-built constituent and donor management features. Let’s explore the top features of the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack.

Constituent / Donor Management

The most important task for any nonprofit organization is to analyze data and derive meaningful insights for more effective fundraising campaign management. Salesforce is the primary resource to manage this constituent and donor data. With this data easily accessible, designing effective strategies to empower better donor, volunteer, and constituent management. With the NPSP you can:

• Manage individual constituents and households
• Track information of constituent/donors like demographic and contact information
• View their relationships and organizations affiliations 

Campaign Management

With Salesforce NPSP, track each fundraising campaign in a single home and take the steps to improve functionality. Salesforce NPSP also helps nonprofit organizations by creating and tracking the campaigns for fundraising or programs. With the NPSP nonprofits can:

• Create deduplicated mailing lists from a campaign
• Create and update campaign members through an opportunity
• Campaigns can be executed within or outside Salesforce based on the campaign

Event Management

For any nonprofit organization, fundraising campaigns are a critical element. Even small events require a lot of data and planning around guests, donors, marketing, logistics, etc. With the Salesforce NPSP, you have a more holistic view of the event, allowing you to streamline key tasks. Further, you can use event management tools to automate marketing efforts and extend the CRM functionalities. 

Volunteer Management

Volunteers are one of the pillars of most nonprofit organizations. The Nonprofit Success Pack gives you an easy-to-use volunteer management feature. With this feature you can:

• Manage volunteer profiles
• Match volunteer skills to volunteer opportunities
• Track volunteer jobs/opportunities – ongoing or for a specific event
• Define shifts for specific jobs
• Enable volunteers can sign up for shifts

Report Generation and Dashboards

All the information you can collect through different sources should be managed and stored in an organized format. The Salesforce NPSP provides multiple report generation tools and dashboards. You’re provided with hundreds of pre-built reports that you’ll find useful to track donations, grants, memberships, campaign metrics, and more! Your organization can expect to smoothly manage:

• Constituent Reports
• Fundraising Reports
• Dashboards

All your reports can be used as they come, or you can customize them to meet your organization’s specific needs. 

Accounting Seed’s Native Connection to Salesforce NPSP

Every nonprofit needs strong accounting. That’s where we step in. Accounting Seed’s connection to Salesforce’s NPSP gives you faster, more accurate control of your organization’s donations. From fundraising to program initiatives and more, the combination of the NPSP with Accounting Seed creates the world’s most flexible, scalable business management platform for nonprofits. 

Our nonprofit customers enjoy lightning-fast, fully automated, real-time, donation management and accounting with no duplicate or inconsistent data. Sign up for a free demo to see how Accounting Seed powers your nonprofit’s cause to the next level. 

A native Salesforce accounting platform, Accounting Seed provides a full 360-degree view of your business’ performance to help you and your accounting team make the best decisions possible.