Nonprofits are constantly faced with the challenge of balancing program capacity, administrative support and donations. Understanding how to leverage a nonprofit organizations donor base requires donor information to be entered into to a relational database, advanced reporting and of course correct and of course the systems and procedures to ensure the data is maintained accurate.
Unfortunately most donor management systems in the market are prohibitively expensive for many small to mid-sized nonprofits. The obvious examples of Raiser’s Edge, Donor Perfect, and Bloomerang each cost thousands of dollars per year and often require the expertise of specially trained consultants to set up and configure. These software packages can often be expanded to include functionality related to event management, volunteer management, online donations but each of these modules come at additional annual cost.
The Salesforce platform provides an alternative for nonprofits that is almost too good to be true.
Salesforce is the 3rd largest software company in the world and whose over 150,000 customers are some of the most recognizable organizations and brands in the world. From its very beginnings, Salesforce has included social responsibility in its mission and supports the charitable sector by granting organizations use of the Salesforce platform.
Qualified charitable organizations can receive 10 user licenses to the complete Salesforce Enterprise edition and the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), a complete set of modules and modifications purpose built for the nonprofit sector, at no cost, and substantial discounts to additional products, training and services.
The Salesforce platform is more than a donor database or even a Constituent Relationship Manager (CRM), through a fully integrated Application Programming Interface (API) system, a custom developed programming language and a thriving network of third party apps, Salesforce is a platform that can be expanded to accommodate any task. This includes sophisticated donor management, volunteer management, reporting, and even direct program data needs all within one software platform, complete with the enterprise level of security, permissions and authentication.
Salesforce also provides, free of charge, access to Trailhead. It’s custom built educational resource that teaches every aspect of Salesforce administration, development and maintenance through a complete set of fun and gamified modules. Training staff on the use of the platform couldn’t be simpler.
If your nonprofit needs to update it’s donor management software or reduce the ongoing costs of its current, limited system, consider a platform that is trusted by fortune 500 companies, and how that will allow you to increase capacity while also maximizing your donor base.
