The unique characteristics of the nonprofit world make it difficult for impact-driven organizations to track valuable data. After all, CRMs designed for commercial businesses typically don’t align with the priorities of the nonprofit world, as they may not be able to handle the complexities involved in donation and relationship tracking, for example.
So choosing the right CRM makes a vital difference to nonprofit operations.
Salesforce understands that — for that reason, they’ve released a solution specifically designed for philanthropic organizations: the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). The functionality of this system is much too comprehensive to cover in one post, but we’ve compiled the top 5 ways that it transforms the typical Salesforce platform into a tool nonprofits can thrive on.
1. In the Nonprofit Success Pack, contacts are king.
Individuals serve as the key to advancing many nonprofits’ missions. After all, individuals accounted for 72 percent of total giving in one study by Charity Navigator. This large share of giving highlights the importance of tracking, engaging and deepening relationships with the myriad of individual donors and volunteers in an org’s network.
That’s where the Nonprofit Success Pack provides a clear advantage over the typical CRM. While many CRMs align your data around businesses and organizations, the Nonprofit Success Pack makes individual contacts the center of your world. It allows users to quickly create a new contact, automatically generate a household for that individual and attach him/her to multiple organizations. Because if a single person volunteers for your org, works for a donor company and sits on the board of a foundation, your CRM should be able to tell you that.
The Nonprofit Success Pack can.
2. Leverage existing relationships to reach potential donors.
If contacts serve as the center of your donor universe, then relationships represent the lifelines of your organization. These connections have become so vital to the charitable world that some nonprofits now prefer the term “relationship building” to “fundraising.”
The Nonprofit Success Pack offers pre-built functionality that tracks this information. You can use the tool to record and understand the array of connections between different advocates and better leverage these ties to deepen donor engagement and connect with new potential partners.
3. Track all kinds of donations and contributions.
Although individuals account for the vast majority of contributions, considerable diversity exists in ways of giving. This reality makes it cumbersome for nonprofits to track every donation in one place. Foundations still donated almost $60 billion in 2016, after all; corporations gave nearly $20 billion. Volunteerism accounted for $184 billion in value in 2015, meanwhile, but only 55% of nonprofits measure volunteer impact.
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The Nonprofit Success Pack, luckily, is pre-built to track giving in a myriad of ways, including:
- One-time monetary contributions
- Recurring donations
- Grants
- In-kind gifts
- Employer match programs
- Memberships
- Volunteering
This functionality can handle all the ways your advocates prefer to give, while still letting you report on the overall health of your fundraising efforts (or should we say “relationship building”). Finally, the Nonprofit Success Pack's flexible architecture ensures that you’re not forced to classify any single person as “a donor” versus “a volunteer,” but instead as an individual who can engage with your mission in all the ways mentioned above and more.
4. Join a community tailored to nonprofits.
Salesforce also recognizes that the unique challenges facing nonprofits extend far beyond technical requirements. For this reason, it built a specific community for nonprofit users: The Power of Us Hub.
Through this online forum, users can receive dedicated support on the Nonprofit Success Pack and discuss functionality — or even best practices unrelated to the platform — with other users. Think of it as Salesforce’s way of reminding you that you’re not alone in your pursuit of meaningful impact.
5. Take advantage of special pricing for philanthropic organizations.
The best part for nonprofits? They can access these benefits without breaking the bank through Salesforce’s discounted pricing for nonprofits. The company itself emphasizes philanthropy in its mission and therefore understands the unique budgetary situations some charitable orgs face. From free licenses to cheaper rates overall, Salesforce ensures that you don’t have to choose between a great tool and affordable solution.
These features put together represent a suite of tools that boost the productivity and reporting capabilities of any charitable organization. With the Nonprofit Success Pack at their disposal, orgs can better streamline their internal processes and connect with a community of like-minded individuals, all for an affordable price. The Nonprofit Success Pack, in short, allows them to maximize their impact by letting them focus less of their energy on administrative tasks and more on their mission.
