5 Expert Tips for a Successful Salesforce Migration

Salesforce.org Elevate is in the process of being retired, and will no longer be sold as of April 3, 2023. See more information in our communication, or find one of our many partners on the AppExchange if you are searching for a digital fundraising solution.

For existing customers, Elevate will be supported through the end of existing contracts.

When I did my kitchen renovation, there were so many things that I wish I had known before I started. Much like any new project or renovation, a transition to Salesforce could have you thinking about the various pros and cons of making this change. Now, I could easily write a blog about my kitchen and chrome versus brass faucets, but today we are going to be talking to five leading experts from various organizations to get their top tips about a migration to Salesforce.

Much like any new project or renovation, a transition to Salesforce could have you thinking about the various pros and cons of making this change.

1. Get a 360-Degree View of Constituents

Nicole Adair, Solution Engineer at Salesforce.org:
Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) is an app that sits on top of Salesforce’s Enterprise platform. It is nonprofit technology for use cases like constituent management, fundraising, marketing and communications, and program management. This means that no matter what your role is in your organization, you can see a full view of information and interaction with every constituent. NPSP has a rich history — it was built by the nonprofit community, for the nonprofit community!

• Your major gift officers can drive productivity on a modern mobile platform with instant analytics and income forecasting
• Programs teams can share transparent impact reports for specific funders
• Leadership can gain full visibility into revenue and staff performance
• Teams no longer have to operate in silos and won’t have to deal with the daily headaches of complicated reporting. Take for instance, Accounting Subledger, a product that allows you to align fundraising data with your existing accounting system

With this 360-degree visibility into people, funds, and outcomes, an organization can make better decisions that drive bigger impact. And because NPSP is fully integrated into Nonprofit Cloud, every nonprofit gets to take advantage of the Salesforce platform with world-class security, at least three product or feature updates every year, a robust AppExchange marketplace, and a thriving Trailblazer Community.

Nonprofits of all sizes use Salesforce. Learn more about fundraising with Nonprofit Cloud and NPSP.

2. A Flexible CRM Platform is Key

3. Assess Your Data & Map it to Your New Model

• Do you really need all that data? We tend to get really attached to all of our data, but many nonprofits would be best served by archiving older records. We have some good advice on what to keep, archive, and leave, which is relevant no matter where you’re coming from.
• Will you need custom fields and objects? What information do you track that is particular to your organization? You know your data and your donors best. What are you squirreling away in a spreadsheet that you wish you could include in your system?
• Would you like to consolidate systems and manage program data in the same place? You can combine mission and fundraising in one place and give all of your users the experience they need. Read how The Trevor Project took their LifeLine to the cloud.
• Which applications do you integrate with now, and which would you like to in the future? For example, there is a ton of opportunity to integrate with your email marketing program. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has been thrilled with their Marketing Cloud integration.

4. Customization is Critical

Tal Frankfurt, CEO at Cloud for Good:
Our customers adopt Salesforce for many reasons, and the ability to customize Salesforce for their needs is a key one. Customization doesn’t mean building everything from scratch, it means flexibility. Salesforce spends almost $2 billion a year on research and development, and as part of that budget they have been steadily releasing solutions for the nonprofit and education sectors.

5. Get the Most From Your Events

• Create milestone emails to congratulate and thank fundraisers who raise a certain amount
• Segment your contacts to recruit peer-to-peer fundraisers (search for successful peer-to-peer fundraisers in your Salesforce database)
• Create new contacts from peer-to-peer donors and implement an email drip campaign to educate new donors and incite action

Second, we see Classy for Salesforce users get a lot more out of their events. When you connect Classy with Salesforce, you can:

• Use past fundraising data to inform the goals you set, both on an individual and campaign level
• Collect all the associated names and information when a family registers for an event or buys more than one ticket
• Pay attention to data trends, like finding out that people tend to give more frequently or in larger amounts after attending an event or activity

These are just a few of the ways nonprofits can use the Classy for Salesforce integration to optimize fundraising campaigns, nurture donor relationships, and accelerate progress on their mission, but when you connect the platforms to get a holistic view of your audience, the possibilities are endless.

It’s also important to create a timeline for the implementation, but don’t be frustrated if you have to make changes to it. The Canadian Cancer Society is an organization that had to do just that. They had to pivot in the midst of the pandemic and run a mini-implementation before eventually bringing it all together.

There you have it — solid expert knowledge on migrations that can get your organization started on the path to planning for a successful migration.

Learn more about Salesforce.org’s Nonprofit Success Pack.

About the Author

Mia P. Rodrigues
Product Marketing at Salesforce.org