Paying It Forward: Nonprofits Helping Nonprofits

I love helping people. I know it’s an old adage, but I really do find the phrase “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” to be true. I can configure extremely complex solutions, workflows, process builders, flows, triggers etc., but my real passion lies in teaching others how to do this. It warms my heart to see my clients on the HUB answering other users questions and participating in the larger Salesforce community.

At Dreamforce 2016 there were numerous amazing sessions presented by nonprofit users. They covered topics from Change Management, Governance, Lightning, Program Management, Fundraising to Getting Salesforce Certified. It was empowering and encouraging to see current and past Cloud for Good clients presenting many of these sessions. They are now subject matter experts and are using their knowledge for good, paying it forward by helping other organizations with similar problems. How do you decide whether to use a process or a flow? What are the best steps for planning to roll out the Lightning Experience? These were just some of the questions coming out of conversations in the Salesforce.org Lodge. I was thrilled to see and hear groups of nonprofit professionals engaged in conversations around the “inside” camp fires. Salesforce is truly a community, and there is a small (albeit mighty) subset that is nonprofit specific, where nonprofits can feel comfortable talking about their specific troubles or pain points as it exists either within their business process or their usage of the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), or other nonprofit specific products. I love seeing our community thrive and grow, while knowing that I play a small part.

Another great way nonprofits are helping other nonprofits is the new Solution Exchange on the Power of Us Hub. This is a beta product, where any nonprofit can submit a Solution, how they are utilizing Salesforce to solve a specific business problem. Some of the last numbers released showed that there are 29,000 nonprofits utilizing Salesforce; that’s a lot of people with a lot of knowledge! Enabling and allowing these organizations to share their solutions with the entire community is just another great way that Salesforce is bringing users together to better utilize the platform. I love reading the use cases and the solutions for different Salesforce and third party products. The AppExchange, as lovely as it is, can be overwhelming for someone just starting out. Being able to see real examples of an organization utilizing a product helps to truly understand it’s value and additional uses.

Now I’m sure some of you are saying, you’re not an expert and you wouldn’t feel comfortable giving advice to another Salesforce user. That’s just rubbish. If you’re logging in and performing any part of your job in Salesforce, you are an expert at that task or process and you can translate your experience into something that can be useful for another user. Do not be intimidated by what you don’t know and share what you do know. Go out there and answer a HUB question, attend your local user group meeting and start a great conversation. Get a developer org and try out that idea you’ve been thinking about putting into action. The more you know about Salesforce the more you can share with the community.

If you need assistance with a Salesforce project, contact your Account Executive at Cloud for Good. We can help you do more good while creating transformational value on the Salesforce platform.

Check Out Some of Our Clients’ Sessions From Dreamforce: