RSMUS.comA few weeks ago, I attended Salesforce’s Agentforce World Tour in Toronto and let me just say: AI is no longer just a buzzword, it’s rapidly becoming the backbone of how we work, think and scale.
What Is Agentforce?
Agentforce is Salesforce’s enterprise-grade AI agent platform, far more than just another chatbot. Built as a new layer on the Salesforce Platform, Agentforce lets organizations create and deploy autonomous, task-oriented agents (powered by the Atlas Reasoning Engine) that can plan, reason, and act using your data and workflows.
Unlike open‑ended tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, or Llama, Agentforce agents are grounded in your company’s structured and unstructured CRM data. They are digital labor that can operate autonomously, within guardrails you define, to leverage Salesforce flows, Apex, and your system’s logic.
Why Does It Matters to Nonprofits?
Agentforce 3.0 introduced powerful tools that go far beyond the typical chatbot. Salesforce showcased real-world nonprofit use cases like:
- Summarizing donor wealth capacity to support fundraising outreach
- Creating regional philanthropic assessments to guide marketing efforts
- Compiling milestone summaries to accelerate annual reporting
These are the kinds of time-consuming everyday tasks that pull your staff from doing the meaningful work they love. Now, AI agents can automate this work so staff can focus on building relationships and advancing your mission.
It was encouraging to see examples from both nonprofit and for-profit sectors, including how organizations like Trudel and Young Drivers of Canada are already using AI agents to deliver insights, personalize services, and support staff productivity.
Addressing Nonprofit Concerns: Trust, Privacy & Readiness
Trust is essential when leveraging AI. Private data needs to be protected, constituent relationships need to be centered, and there is little room for error.
Throughout the event, Salesforce emphasized its Trust Layer, which supports these needs through:
- Guardrails to reduce hallucinations
- Prompt defense and contextual grounding
- Data masking and tokenization to protect sensitive information
The Nonprofit Points of Inflection event RSM conducted the day before highlighted the need for these security features. To quote one of our attendees, “When you’re dealing with data that’s often collected manually or through distributed outreach (think: volunteers), and may include highly sensitive details, privacy and accuracy are nonnegotiable.”
How can RSM help Nonprofits become AI-capable organizations?
At RSM, we understand that embracing AI can feel overwhelming. That’s why we offer a scaffolded approach to meet nonprofits where they are:
- Salesforce Assessment & Roadmap
- We evaluate your current Salesforce setup (NPSP or NPC) and develop a tailored strategy for integrating Agentforce in a meaningful, manageable way.
- We guide you through best practices for data hygiene, ethical AI usage, and guardrail design, ensuring you’re equipped for long-term success.
- Foundations Accelerator
- We help you take advantage of Salesforce’s $0 Foundations package to quickly build a low-risk proof-of-concept AI agent. This allows your team to explore the value of AI with minimal initial investment.
Final Thoughts
One key takeaway from Agentforce Toronto: AI won’t replace your people; it will only help them deliver your mission more effectively. But it starts with taking the first step. If you’re not sure how or where to begin, we’re here to help.
Interested in exploring what AI can do for your nonprofit? Feel free to reach out to me, Shreyas Vijayasarathy or RSM Salesforce team, to continue the conversation.
Shreyas Vijayasarathy
Shreyas Vijayasarathy is a Senior Salesforce Consultant at RSM and provides consulting services to non-profit organizations. With over 4 years of experience in the ecosystem, he focuses on developing and improving Salesforce solutions across non-profit, health care, sales, service, and experience clouds. A University of Toronto graduate, Shreyas has a deep passion for applying AI to improve human-focused interactions in the nonprofit and healthcare sectors.
