Wiser.org Blog

WiserEarth is a big users of Salesforce for our donor and volunteer management. This powerful and free tool is certainly something all non-profits should consider using, especially if they are stuck with Excel or an existing proprietary and expensive solution.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce was designed for Fortune 500 companies with large sales teams selling product and services. As you can imagine given the userbase, Salesforce is very robust, scaleable, easily integrated, and powerful. You use it from your web browser – no need for a program on your computer – so there is no software to manage or maintain. Any computer with an internet connection from home or the office can access the service. You can even work offline and sync your work later on when you have an internet connection.

The four basic building blocks that we have used the most to help the operations of our non profit are:

• Leads – prospective donors or volunteers. You can even have people fill in a webform on your regular website which triggers emails to your volunteer manager or donor relations person.
• Contacts – people for whom you have information. This is where we have all our donor contacts and newsletter recipients.
• Accounts – organizations or households from which we have received grants.
• Opportunities – prospective or awarded grants or gifts.

These basic elements can be customized, and the Salesforce Foundation has created the Nonprofit Starter Pack which is essentially taking the for-profit format and adapting it to non-profit terminology and workflow. Most organizations can probably use this format but beware, once you have started with the Nonprofit Starter Pack as opposed to the regular plain vanilla Salesforce there is no turning back. With all the online resources and training available its pretty easy for a tech savvy person to get a Saleforce site up and running but the truth is there is no substitute for the advice of a paid consultant or experienced non-profit Salesforce administrator. Since most 501c3 non-profit organizations or foreign equivalents qualify for a free 10 user license, I would highly recommend you spend a few $s on some expert advice and training to get your team up to speed and to customize your site to your specific needs. Here is a list of consultants that specialize in non-profit Salesforce integration. I have personally user Swift River Consulting and found them to be an excellent shop.

My experience with Salesforce has been through setting up sites for four organizations, with budgets ranging from $200,000 to $4 million, with funding from foundations, government agencies, large private donors and smaller individual contributions. For the most part everyone has been happy with the results. The workflow management, tracking and reporting capabilities are exceptional. Plus Salesforce has an App store called the Appexchange with over 1,300 third party plug-ins. Popular nonprofit services like Vertical Response, Evenbrite, Wealthengine, Groundwire etc are represented so you can in some cases seamlessly integrate you donor and volunteer management workflow with existing providers. Down the road if it turns out that your needs are very specific there is an entire developer community that can build custom applications that link into Salesforce.

 How do I get Salesforce for my non-profit?

The Salesforce Foundation gives away a free 10 user license to all registered. If you have a fundraising team that is larger than 10, extra licenses are sold at a deep discount. This is a phenomenal deal. For-profit corporations pay over $1,000 per person per year for this service. So you are essentially getting a donation of $10,000 plus each year. Click here t0 apply for your product donation.

Tags: salesforce, technology