RSMUS.comIf you’re a Salesforce fan or just plugged into nonprofit tech, you have likely heard rumors about Salesforce’s change to its nonprofit offerings. Some people are super excited about it (spoiler alert: we’re in that category), and some are a little trepidatious. Either way, RSM is your trusted advisor to break it all down.
What is Salesforce’s Nonprofit Cloud?
Nonprofit Cloud is a new suite of nonprofit offerings, including case management and program management solutions. It will continue to evolve to incorporate what we know and love about the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). In addition, it will give us more access to powerful industry solutions used in healthcare and financial services to help us deliver our missions even further.
How is Nonprofit Cloud different than NPSP, Case Management, or Program Management Module (PMM)?
Rather than utilizing managed packages like NPSP, Nonprofit Cloud Case Management, or PMM, Nonprofit Cloud is built on core Salesforce functionality. That means it is far less restrictive than our existing nonprofit solutions. It also means we have access to standard industry components that we haven’t had access to with NPSP, giving us powerful and high-performing new ways to engage with our data.
What new features will we see?
Dozens of industry-common components will be available with Nonprofit Cloud. Here are a few that we’re really excited about:
Actionable Relationship Center (ARC)
Actionable Relationship Center (ARC) allows you to visualize and take action on relationships between records from a Lightning Record Page. For example, you can visualize connections between individuals and organizations, see care plans, goals, and benefits assigned and disbursed related to a case, or see relationships between custom and standard object records. You can also add or update related records without navigating away from your record. With an intuitive drag-and-drop builder, visualizations are accessible for an administrator to create and customize.
Business Rules Engine (BRE)
Business Rules Engine (BRE) helps you automate complex decisions through powerful, scalable calculations and lookups using decision tables. For example, users can calculate benefit allotments or program eligibility on demand, and BRE can be configured declaratively and launched from Flow, OmniStudio, and custom or third-party tools.
Data Processing Engine (DPE)
Data Processing Engine (DPE) can process complex transformations and calculations of data. For example, DPE will change how we build complex rollups or formulas, such as program benefit usage, membership levels, or donation history.
OmniStudio
OmniStudio allows you to create formattable guided processes for internal or external users that incorporate data from many systems and sources. OmniStudio’s flexible drag-and-drop builder allows for standard or highly customized formatting to make your system administrators and marketing team happy. In addition, flexCards can be used with OmniStudio to collect inputs, display data from a related system or DPE calculation, and allow users to trigger actions such as OmniScripts or DPE updates.
A few things to consider…
Fundraising & Grantmaking
The initial offering of Nonprofit Cloud does not have robust solutions for fundraising and grantmaking. NPSP cannot be installed in a Salesforce environment on top of Nonprofit Cloud, as Nonprofit Cloud reimagines NPSP to make it more flexible and scalable. However, certain features are not yet available and will continue to be delivered over time. It’s coming, though — Nonprofit Cloud grantmaking, fundraising, and engagement functionality will be released later this year.
Data Model
Nonprofit Cloud utilizes Person Accounts, a reasonably significant shift from historical best practices for NPSP. Person Accounts will now hold Contact and Account data, and Party Relationship Groups will create relationships between individuals. While this is a shift, we’re excited about it because it gives us far more flexibility to track interpersonal groups beyond simple households. This will work great for case management, but future releases must build on this functionality to fully use Person Accounts with fundraising.
Pricing
Pricing has increased to $60 EE or $100 UE per monthly user. Licensing goes father, however, as there is no longer separate licensing for case management features, and additional features are now included out of the box, such as Accounting Subledger (Growth). In addition, power of Us license donation will continue for the first ten Nonprofit Cloud licenses. More pricing information is available from Salesforce here.
Migration
A new org needs to be created to take advantage of Nonprofit Cloud features. That means you must migrate your configuration and data to a new org if you are an existing Salesforce customer. Again, a trusted partner like RSM can help you with this journey.
What does this mean for me?
Existing NPSP Customers
If your organization currently uses NPSP, there is no urgency to move to the new Nonprofit Cloud solution. Salesforce has confirmed that NPSP will continue to be supported. You may proceed to Nonprofit Cloud to take advantage of all the latest industry features.
New Customers
If your organization is considering a move to Salesforce, you have a few options. You can still implement NPSP, Nonprofit Cloud Case Management, and PMM. If you want to take advantage of the new industry solutions for case and program management and can wait to implement fundraising until later this year, Nonprofit Cloud is the way to go. And fun fact: RSM is one of the first firms to work on implementing the new product, so we’re here to help you as you consider your path.
Jamie Van Nostrand
Jamie provides Salesforce consultation services to a variety of nonprofit entities. She has worked in nonprofits as a fundraiser and development operations director for nearly 20 years and has been in the Salesforce ecosystem for 10 years. As a consultant, Jamie has experience in project management, system implementations and enhancements, and business process reviews. Jamie’s background has allowed her to gain a deep knowledge of the nonprofit industry, specifically focused on philanthropy and constituent relationship management. At RSM, she manages the Salesforce nonprofit consulting team, working to oversee client work and collaborating with colleagues to develop new service offerings for the client base. She has been an active member of dozens of Salesforce implementations in the nonprofit arena – including arts organizations, membership associations, think tanks, charitable organizations, and social service organizations. Before joining RSM in 2022, Jamie started her career in nonprofit organizations, where she spent 20 years recruiting volunteers, managing membership programs, directing donor relations and stewardship activities, and running development operations. While in that space, she worked closely on a Salesforce system implementation and management and then moved into consulting with a focus on nonprofit clients. She has managed large- and small-scale projects along her journey and thrives on being a first-choice advisor to nonprofits looking to leverage Salesforce to better serve their constituents and staff.
