6 Things You’ll Love About Salesforce

By: Benjamin Picard, Associate Solution Engineer, Salesforce

The impact that small charities and nonprofits have on the people and communities they serve is unquestionable. Most are not small because they are just getting started or cannot grow – usually, its because they focus on a niche need within their community.

To be able to meet these needs, it’s crucial that small organisations are equipped with the best tools available. With them, they can not only improve processes and increase efficiencies, but they can also raise more funds and showcase their impact.

If you’re part of a small nonprofit and have ever found yourself with scattered data, incomplete donor information or an abundance of manual work, then today might be your lucky day.

Here are 6 reasons why Salesforce and the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) might just be the perfect solution for your small nonprofit or charity (remember: eligible nonprofits can access 10 donated Salesforce (+NPSP) subscriptions and discounts on additional subscriptions, products and services via the Power of Us Program).

6 Things Small Nonprofits will Love about Salesforce

 

1) Having a solution as unique as you!

As a nonprofit or charity, you’ll likely have limited resources, but at the same time you need a solution that is tailored to your unique needs. With Salesforce and the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), you can harness the flexibility of the Salesforce platform, customise it to your unique requirements, and enjoy a solution that fits your program delivery and fundraising needs exactly.

And in case you were wondering – you don’t need to be an engineer to make these customisations a reality! All of this is possible through point-and-click tools (no coding required)!

Get Inspired: read how Ben Wilkes, Executive Director at Children on the Edge customised NPSP leveraging Trailhead as a learning resource.

2) Getting to know your supporters

At the heart of every nonprofit is its donors. But for today’s donors, it’s no longer enough to receive a donation and just say thank you. Donors want to feel part of your impact, and they want to feel connected to your mission. Salesforce empowers nonprofits and charities to better understand and engage donors by providing a 360-degree view of every donor, supporter, and volunteer. This makes it easier to measure and communicate the impact every $£€ and every volunteer hour, has on your constituents.

Learn more: see how Self Help Africa links donors to programs and communicates impact in this story.

3) Bringing everyone together

Collaboration is key to accelerating your mission. With Chatter, teams can easily collaborate, share files and communicate around projects, activities, reports and more. And if you’re ready to scale, Community Cloud is a great next step, giving you the ability to collaborate, engage with, and support your clients, donors, supporters and partners, both online and on mobile.

Get inspired: read how Education and Employers has engaged a network of 40k volunteers with NPSP and Community Cloud.

4) Understanding your impact

“Do we have enough funds?” “How much can we expect to raise in the next month?” “How many donors do we still need to attract in order to reach our goal?” These are questions you might ask yourself every day – and finding the answers can be tricky. With the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), reporting has never been easier! Reports and dashboards are fully customisable and give you the ability to drill down and pinpoint where your focus should be. Once you’ve identified the answer, turn it into collective action by sharing insights or collaborating with your peers. On the run? No problem! Your analytics are also available on your phone so you can customise, connect and deploy everywhere, instantly.

Deep Dive: check out the awesome NPSP Reporting Workbook to learn more about reporting with NPSP

5) Finding apps to extend and scale your solution

Salesforce and NPSP can do a lot for your organisation, but there are still plenty of occasions where you’ll want to extend your solution. Maybe you need to bring the power of images into Salesforce, or you want to extend your event management capabilities. The AppExchange gives you a place to install apps and extensions to Salesforce. Many apps are discounted for nonprofits and you can filter specifically for nonprofit apps to easily find apps that solve common nonprofits problems.

Apps to Browse: take a look at The Power of Apps Series to learn about some powerful AppExchange apps used by nonprofits around the globe.

6) Being part of a global community

Salesforce is now 19 years old, and with time comes experience. Today, over 32 thousand nonprofits use Salesforce and the impact they report makes us proud. On average, Salesforce.org customers have recorded the following changes:

• +49% faster response to constituents
• +24% donor retention
• -32% service and support costs
• -17% cost per dollar raised

On top of that, a staggering 89% of Salesforce.org customers say Salesforce has helped improve their ability to achieve their mission.

Want to learn more? Download the Small Nonprofit, Big Impact E-Book today.