At the core of your nonprofit’s CRM selection is a question: Which service is going to be the most beneficial for our organization and our clients? Chances are, someone within your nonprofit is familiar with Salesforce. At the very least, they are aware of its existence and its position as the leader in CRM services for nonprofits. Salesforce is likely to be the first service that you research. The question does not become “which CRM service?” but rather “why Salesforce?” From the vast features of the Nonprofit Starter Pack (NPSP) to the fact that Salesforce is free to nonprofits, let us explain why this cloud-based service is the best for your nonprofit organization.
1. Nonprofit Starter Pack (NPSP)
Salesforce loves nonprofits so much, it created an entire series of packages for you! The NPSP runs on top of your Enterprise Edition licenses and allows you to really get to know your donors. The NPSP allows you to create Households and manage recurring gifts, to manage individual donors’ company relationships (and much more!), all with the ease and efficiency you’ve come to expect from Salesforce. If you feel like your organization might need to customize the NPSP, or to get some additional support, our Salesforce Bootcamp is a great option which covers the fundamentals of Salesforce and the Nonprofit Starter Pack.
2. Automation
Salesforce is so powerful in part because of its ability to automate so many of your organization’s processes. For example, with the help of the AppExchange, you are able to automatically keep your constituent, volunteer and donor databases updated. Additionally, That’s Salesforce’s 360 degree view allows you to maintain and nurture these connections, often without manual updates. Relationships – whether they are between you and your donors, your volunteers and your constituents,
or another combination of players within your nonprofit – are the key to nonprofit success.
3. Events Headquarters
With Salesforce, your team can easily create, maintain and implement fundraising events, a core responsibility within nonprofit organizations. Salesforce will allow you to track RSVPs, create seating charts, and gain key insights to your events. Because Salesforce makes these functions so easy, your staff will spend less time fretting over logistics and more time engaging constituents and donors.
4. Total Transparency
If you’ve ever spent hours on the tedious task of logging and correlating various points of contact with your constituents, you’ll fall in love with the 360 degree view of constituent interactions that Salesforce provides. All of the tools that previously required multiple steps and systems to optimize are consolidated into one powerful dashboard. Further, Salesforce will allow you to easily maintain a comprehensive portrait of your constituents, including detailed histories and contact information.
5. Longevity
Salesforce isn’t going anywhere, and nonprofits can take comfort in that fact. Salesforce practically invented the Software As A Service sector of the economy and is recognized as the leader in CRM solutions worldwide. Publicly traded with $18 billion in market capitalization and $4 billion in sales, the likelihood of Salesforce going out of production is virtually zero. Additionally, Salesforce is, as we mentioned, free to nonprofits. Between the long history of developers giving their software away to nonprofits and the vast popularity of the program, Salesforce is likely to always provide nonprofits with 10 free licenses and an 80% discount on any additional licenses.
Not only is Salesforce the leading CRM solution for nonprofits, it has been and will likely be around for a long while. Its robust catalog of features and plugins (both within the NPSP and outside of it) gives it a definite advantage over other CRM services, and its accommodation to a deep level of customization makes it an ideal option for the varying nature of organizations within the nonprofit sector. Though Salesforce is often complex to install (that’s where 501Partners comes in!), it is so user-friendly and so easy to learn that NPOs can, with a little bit of help from consultants, establish their Salesforce needs and quickly and easily implement them for maximum efficiency.
