Gift Processing With Cloud for Good’s Advancement Accelerator

As outlined in Tal Frankfurt and Kestryl Lowrey’s illuminating examination on Salesforce Advancement for Higher Education, the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) features vast, untapped potential for institutions looking to transform their advancement processes. We previously discussed why we believe institutions do not need to be beholden to either NPSP or EDA; Cloud for Good has developed our Advancement Accelerator to leverage both solutions together through integration.  This blog post is the first in a series of articles where we will discuss and show how the Cloud for Good Advancement Accelerator solves the greatest challenges advancement teams are facing – from integrating student data with advancement to gift processing and moves management.

Gift Processing with the Cloud for Good Advancement Accelerator

Today we would like to explore three different ways that gifts could be entered into our Advancement Accelerator, accompanied by a demonstrative video.

1. Batch Gift Entry

The Batch Gift Entry tool allows Advancement teams to enter their gifts in a streamlined fashion, whether through a stack of checks received in the mail, or cash/credit card donations from an event. Whatever the use case, the tool has several benefits including the ability to create templates, which customizes the information you are collecting for the batch.

With manual entry, there is always a risk of human error, but the Batch Gift Entry tool helps limit that potential by collecting the expected count of gifts and expected total batch amounts in advance. Each entry made toward the total batch is added up and tallied against these numbers as they are added to the batch for processing. Batch Gift entry also detects outstanding payments and pledged gifts already in the system and alerts you, preventing duplicate gift entry.

2. Data Loads

Your Advancement team may encounter a situation in which your gifts are in an exported file from a third-party system or service. This is an excellent opportunity to use the Data Load method of gift entry. With this solution, you will be able to take advantage of built-in automation and matching logic to help you upload, match, and adjust a group of gifts all from a single document.

Advancement teams can import their data and detect whether a contact exists in the system already, or if a new contact must be created, as well as match existing pledge gifts that have become fulfilled and must now be updated. The data import framework allows for specially-formatted spreadsheets to be added to our Accelerator’s Imports table, all done within the CRM itself. With NPSP’s intelligent field detection features, data is mapped automatically, pulling salutations, first names, and essential contact information allowing for quick and easy record management.

3. Online Giving

Another way you may encounter giving information is through online giving forms. Salesforce developed Elevate to help create and manage one-time or reoccurring online giving. The Elevate giving forms are responsive, creating an exceptional experience from whatever device your donor is using.

While we can support many online giving solutions including Linvio, Classy, DonorDrive, and iATS, with Elevate as a part of the Advancement Accelerator, you are able to manage all your credit card transactions that come through the Salesforce Elevate Giving Page or process a credit card transaction directly in your Salesforce org. On the Salesforce Elevate Giving Payments Management page, you can view ID information, designation, or even regenerate an emailed receipt directly from this page. In Salesforce, the reoccurring or one-time donation records are automatically created through the seamless integration with Salesforce Elevate.

Cloud for Good’s Advancement Accelerator provides an integrated solution combining the best of what both NPSP and EDA can offer. Our next article will focus on integrating your student data with advancement data and how we are solving for it. Forming a multi-org strategy that highlights EDA’s exemplary student focus and NPSP’s ability to leverage fundraising opens up possibilities for higher education institutions that are greater than the sum of its parts.