Every year, Salesforce puts on an incredible week of learning, fun, and inspiration, and Dreamforce 2017 was no disappointment. My team and I enjoyed hearing about new features and have already started launching new functionality for our clients.
Nonprofit organizations, in particular, are getting a major upgrade in features, which is an exciting development. At Soliant Consulting, a sizable portion of our Salesforce clients are within the nonprofit sector. My team and I therefore took detailed notes on these features and are happy to share our insights with you.
Depending on their business needs, nonprofits may choose either the traditional Sales Cloud model or the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). The former uses Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities; the latter uses Households and Donations. Whether or not an organization chooses to utilize the NPSP, we recommend nonprofits check out the following features to increase their capabilities on the platform.
Einstein for Nonprofits
Through NPSP, you can track donations by families. Einstein can determine whether an action should be taken to close a gift from a donor. Einstein can assign a score to a donation, and then determine when to send a thank you letter. You can also use the score to determine your next action, such as enrolling the donation in an engagement plan (series of tasks).
Quip Collaboration on Reports
Quip is a collaboration tool that integrates with Salesforce through an AppExchange app. It proves quite useful for large teams within nonprofits. For example, if a user only needs to view a few reports, and never needs to enter or alter data, you may not want to have that user taking up one of your Salesforce licenses. Using Quip, administrators can share reports and dashboards with Quip users without having those users log into Salesforce. This is a great cost saving feature, as Quip licenses are less expensive than Salesforce licenses.
Trailmixes on Trailhead
Trailmixes are a brand new feature on Trailhead. If you have a specific learning goal in mind, want to gain more experience with a subset of salesforce, or are working towards a certification, Trailmixes are a way to focus your energy on specific badges.
Each Trailmix identifies a topic and lists a series of badges that relate to that topic. For users wishing to learn more about NPSP, check out the Getting Started with Salesforce and the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) – Admins Trailmix. I highly recommend the Mange Fundraising for Nonprofits trail and the Manage Volunteers for Nonprofits trail.
More Tips for Nonprofit Success In Salesforce
If you are looking for other resources on what new features are available, Salesforce.org has a YouTube channel where most of the sessions from Dreamforce are now posted. It even has a Nonprofits playlist. These are excellent resources for learning more about how nonprofits can utilize Salesforce to its fullest extent.
If you have any questions on how to put these new features into practice for your nonprofit organization, my team and I can help provide direction. Contact us to learn more.
