Even on a powerful platform like Salesforce, we’ve all had moments where we need a little bit more. Maybe your nonprofit is using the Nonprofit Starter Pack (NPSP) for a while and you’ve found that you need more robust support for managing your fundraising and your donors’ preferences. Maybe you’re new to Salesforce and you know that you need it tailored to complex nonprofit business processes. Either way, when your nonprofit reaches a certain point in your approach to CRM, it may be time to consider an application like roundCause.
roundCause is a comprehensive application for nonprofits built on the Salesforce platform. It has a robust set of features for fundraising, marketing and communications, events, and overall relationship management. It offers 360 degree view of your donors and volunteers, as well as empowering you to track and increase constituent engagement. The application features a toolkit for individual fundraising, including detailed giving summaries, form building, and payment processing. A user-friendly wizard streamlines the entry of individual gifts, and batch uploads are also supported. Foundation giving and grants management is simplified with roundCause’s tools for managing proposals and tracking deliverables. The application allows you to manage seasonal addresses, constituent preferences, and various salutations, at the contact or household level. Events management with ticketing, seating, and mobile check-in is another powerful feature. roundCause also offers options for volunteer management, a toolkit that is on their road map for a major update in the near future.
The application is composed of a series of packages, such as “Bios,” “Giving”, and “Payments.” The multi-package approach allows roundCorner (the company that created roundCause) to offer new releases and updates regularly. It is built 100% on Salesforce and leverages the full power of the platform. Whenever possible, the application builds off of standard Salesforce objects like Accounts for Households and Organizations or Opportunities for Donations. Furthermore, because the application is native to Salesforce, it is compatible with just about any other app from the AppExchange that you install to further customize or extend your Salesforce instance.
No application is truly comprehensive, and even an impressive suite like roundCause has some limitations. The tool doesn’t have any built-in general ledger integration, so nonprofits hoping to bring their finance departments onto Salesforce will need to select an additional tool to support that. Cloud for Good can help you asses and implement a connector between your general ledger and roundCause.
A powerful app like roundCause is an investment in your organization’s CRM strategy. Full user licenses with access to all of roundCause’s standard features run $900 per year, per user. If not all of your users require full access, however– for instance, maybe your programs staff doesn’t need access to the fundraising and events module– there are also licenses for just the main “Bios” package. This would give your users access to the core data model and the constituent data they need, at a much lower price point than the full license.
roundCause is a good option for nonprofits with well-defined business processes and complex fundraising requirements. The tool aims to offer advanced functionality out of the box, with plenty of room for customization to an organization’s specific needs and use cases. It is geared towards large, enterprise-level nonprofits– though it could also be a useful tool for small to mid-size organizations. When you’re considering whether or not roundCause is right for you, consider these questions:
- What is my overall CRM strategy?
- Where do I want my database to be in 3 years? In 5 years?
- How does the total cost of ownership of my current solution compare to roundCause?
Any nonprofit that is using Salesforce, or considering using Salesforce, is looking for the best strategies for engaging their constituents, streamlining their processes, and achieving their mission. By extending and enhancing the Salesforce platform for donor management and constituent engagement, roundCause could help your organization move even closer to achieving your goals. Learn about our database selection and implementation services here.
