There’s no doubt: Salesforce, an extremely popular and powerful customer relationship management (CRM) system for for-profit businesses, is also a great donor management system, volunteer management system, and event management system for nonprofits. The best part is that, as a nonprofit, you can get 10 Salesforce Enterprise Edition subscriptions for free through the company’s Power of Us program, and deep discounts if you need more than 10.
Perhaps Salesforce describes itself best: “Salesforce for Nonprofits is the set of end-to-end solutions any nonprofit needs to become a connected nonprofit. Built for the social and mobile era, Salesforce for Nonprofits will connect your entire nonprofit — your partners, supporters, employees, and programs — so you can deliver better programs and services, engage and strengthen your community, communicate more effectively, and raise more resources… Imagine a unified view of every interaction that clients, supporters, members, funders, volunteers and affiliates have with your organization.”
The Enterprise Edition is indeed amazing in its depth and robustness. However, you also need the ability to zero in on the info you need to know at any given time. At DonorLynk, we help nonprofits figure out exactly which Salesforce features are most important to them, and provide easily accessible, customized views that harness the platform’s power.
The cool part about Salesforce is that, with some work, it can provide the exact views that people in your particular organization want to see at a glance — contacts management, accounts, campaigns, reports, you name it. You can tie in donor info with different events you have. You can see someone’s demographic and contact info, how much money they have given, and how involved they are with your organization — all on one screen.
Salesforce is basically a digital command post for, well, everything you do. It depends on what you make of it.
We can talk about Salesforce all day. Try us!
Joe Paone is a content strategist at DonorLynk who loves informing nonprofits.