With today’s unprecedented economic, ecological, humanitarian, and epidemiological challenges, it’s never been more important that nonprofit organizations can optimize management so they can carry out their missions in the most effective way. The Salesforce platform – and a Salesforce Impact Partner – can empower nonprofits with greater ability to change people’s lives, and the world we live in, for the better.
In this article we’ll explore why this is, with some real-life examples to demonstrate.
In a rapidly changing world with new budgetary limitations, nonprofits find themselves unable to realize their full potential. Too often, they’re held back from organizational development by high operating loads and a lack of data needed for swift and agile decision-making. As a result, their effectiveness declines.
Ultimately, the main goal of a nonprofit organization is to provide aid to beneficiaries. Fundraising and volunteering are resources for that. But many organizations lack the insights they need to effectively deliver this aid, drive volunteering management, and launch fundraising campaigns. This is because their data is kept in disparate silos and in a wide range of incompatible formats.
Nonprofits need a “single source of truth”, with clear and systematized data, to understand how they can raise and organize resources for providing aid when and where it is most needed. However, Salesforce’s Nonprofit Cloud meets precisely this need.
The Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud is designed to provide nonprofits with an unrivaled Constituent Relationship Management system. It’s an integrated platform purpose-built for the sector, providing crucial new visibility and control over your all-important data.
Salesforce’s Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) is the foundation of the Nonprofit Cloud. It’s an industry standard-data model with objects and capabilities to help manage nonprofit organizations’ income streams, inbound grants, and programs.
Now there are features providing opportunities to use Salesforce across a range of valuable areas. Here are some of them:
Nonprofit Cloud provides fantastic benefits straight out of the box, making it much easier to manage donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries. It can greatly help a nonprofit to make the implementation of their mission more effective, thanks to a real-time, 360° view, with access to insightful analytics.
This is possible because you can now bring together existing requests from beneficiaries and all the available resources: both in terms of personnel and funds. Based on the data collected and stored in one system, it is now possible to make data-driven decisions. What’s more, nonprofits can now ensure regular communication with internal and external actors at all stages, so that this process can be as engaging and effective as possible.
However, every nonprofit organization is different, and to make Salesforce truly deliver all it can, additional expertise may be required.
While the core NPSP functionality may suit many nonprofits, some have specific activities that require particular processes. This is where our experience as a salesforce.org partner makes a difference.
Hope for the Future (a climate charity cooperating with the UK Parliament) came to us to enroll in VRP’s QuickStart program, so they could gain the benefits of Salesforce quickly and cost-effectively. Like many nonprofits, they struggled to keep track of their lobbying activities and grant management.
We configured a custom component to track lobbying targets and match supporters via postcode. With our help, Hope for the Future gained a tool to easily oversee lobbying messages, responses, and relevant MPs’ votes via reports which help them to analyze the effectiveness of their efforts, track changes and adjust the operations. Now they have automated workflows for managing everything in a single, unified platform, cutting admin time, and helping them do their work more efficiently and effectively.
The Belarus Red Cross Society is another nonprofit that has benefited from VRP’s deep experience as a Saleforce.org Impact Partner. They turned to VRP to resolve a poorly configured implementation of Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and poor integration with their payment provider.
The issues they faced took them away from their core mission, weakened relationships with their donors, and lowered their income. Our team re-architected their Salesforce platform to align with best practices before deploying a new, stable payment gateway integration instantly resolving their long-standing issues.
The success of this project attracted the attention of other organizations who were part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). They were keen to gain the same benefits from a single source of truth and knew we could deliver.
Currently, we have completed five projects including the Russian Red Cross (An NPSP implementation, localization and integration), the Georgia Red Cross (An NPSP implementation integrated with email and fundraising tools) as well as nonprofit cloud implementations for the Romanian and Ukrainian Red Cross. This work has helped multiple members of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to increase program effectiveness, raise more funds, and ultimately increase their impact.
Many charities struggle with matching and distributing donations and grants with stipulations to suitable projects and to effectively forecast their progress and demonstrate compliance to supporters and funders. This was the case for our client – FELM – one of the largest Finnish civil society organizations.
VRP’s Salesforce experts decided to add a new system logic and Fund and Fund Target objects to allow for a precise fund allocation according to particular donor experience and grant requirements. Now FELM has a tool to estimate project funding, easily contact relevant donors for additional resources, and provide greater transparency. Overall, they were able to reduce donation administration by 31%.
“The best part of working on nonprofit projects is designing the impossible. Of course, seemingly impossible for our clients, but not for us. They are very surprised when they talk about things they have dreamed of and are convinced they will remain in the realm of their dreams. I can make them a reality.”
Mateusz Twarożek, Salesforce Consultant, VRP Consulting
Manual data entry is a common problem of nonprofits. Even if digital platforms offer data exporting and importing tools, the process is laborious, time-consuming, and can be neglected due to other core activities.
This was the case with one of our clients, Global’s Make Some Noise, a UK charity focused on improving the lives of disadvantaged people in our communities by working with small charities across the UK. They needed to improve the time-consuming process of importing external giving site data, so they would be able to manage and track donations more easily from all sources.
We used our deep product development expertise and inside knowledge from their team to create an app to help overcome these challenges in the nonprofit sector. Our work led to a connector that saved invaluable time and solved their need for a real-time view into giving site data.
This is how GivingX was born. This native app connects Salesforce to fundraising sites, such as the popular JustGiving, thereby providing insights into which campaigns are receiving the most donations, as well as an understanding of which giving sites work better for their fundraising efforts. This app is now available to everyone on the Salesforce AppExchange.
These examples all demonstrate how, with the right help, Nonprofit Cloud’s rich functionality can be leveraged and tailored to address specific challenges. It can bring even greater value to your organization at a time when you need it most.
After all, last year showed that now, more than ever, nonprofit organizations need to be able to focus on their missions rather than on admin tasks. Optimizing and implementing their solution as quickly as possible is extremely important in achieving that. The same applies to fixing any issues with existing solutions – agile adaptation is the key.
Nonprofits need an expert who understands their requirements, frustrations, and their sector itself. They need a partner that can quickly and effectively help them implement a new solution or adapt their existing solution, so they can focus on what matters – their missions – instead of administrative tasks.
As an experienced Salesforce Impact Partner, VRP Consulting has helped nonprofits around the world to drive efficiency, reduce costs, and use their data more effectively. Now they’re ready, whatever the future brings.
We would love to do the same for your organization. Get in touch today and let’s discuss what we can do together.
Lana Kuntsevich
Sr. Strategic Sales Director & Nonprofit Vertical Lead
VRP Consulting
Lana Kuntsevich joined VRP in 2018 to expand the company’s book of business in North America. Leveraging her vast experience in Technology Sales, Lana is focused on serving nonprofit clients and growing VRP’s vertical expertise. Passionate about her job, she emphasizes the importance of a “putting yourself into the clients’ shoes’ approach and is dedicated to exceeding customers’ expectations.
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