About a year and a half ago, I wrote a blog post about moves management and the ways nonprofits can use Salesforce to manage a moves management program. Since that time, a new feature has been added to the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) that will provide an even more seamless experience in managing your moves to cultivate donors (or other constituents like volunteers or program participants).
In a recent release of NPSP, Engagement Plans and Levels were introduced into the package. Engagement plans allow you to create a series of tasks, or a plan, to move a constituent from a defined starting place (for example, being a prospect brand new to the organization) to a defined ending place (the prospect making a major gift). The tasks that are part of an engagement plan can be dependent or independent of one another. If you want to ensure that step 1 occurs before step 2 then you can create step 2’s task to be dependent on the completion of step 1. You can also create templates with engagement plans so you don’t have to re-create each task or series of tasks every time a new major donor prospect comes into your pipeline.
While engagement plans are a great fit for managing moves with prospects and donors, there are many other use cases for nonprofits. You can use engagement plans for volunteer management if you require volunteers to go through a series of tasks (such as submitting an application, going through a background check, coming in for an interview, etc.) before volunteering with the organization. These tasks can help to ensure that all volunteers go through the necessary steps before proceeding with a volunteer opportunity. You can also use engagement plans to invite someone to become a Board member or for program management. Let’s say one of your programs is assisting individuals in securing employment. You can create a series of tasks that an individual should go through to secure employment (submit resume for review, update LinkedIn profile, conduct mock interviews, etc.). These engagement plans can help an organization ensure that the right steps are taken each time a constituent comes into your network and help you better organize your outreach to them.
Engagement plans can be associated with Contacts, Opportunities, and Cases as well. This allows you to track your tasks, or moves, related to a specific person as well as their gift or case record. You can also attach files to an engagement plan so you can record additional documentation if needed.
Another new feature of the NPSP is levels. These levels can help you categorize constituents based on amount they give, amount of hours they volunteer, etc. You can then create an engagement plan based on the level a constituent is in. So for example, if a donor gives more than $1,000/year you may wish to classify them at the “Gold” level or if a donor gives more than $5,000/year they may be at the “Platinum” level. Once a donor hits the Gold or Platinum levels, you can have an engagement plan template that includes a series of tasks to boost their giving or encourage sustained giving. Similarly, once a volunteer completes a certain amount of volunteer time, you may wish to recognize them as a certain level and communicate with them in a specified manner.
These levels allow you to create tasks and plans for a group of people based on a set of attributes which can help ensure that constituents are always communicated with in an organized manner while attempting to avoid anyone falling through the cracks. You can always override a task that is part of an engagement plan if it is not relevant to a given constituent for any reason.
Once of the most beneficial aspects of being on the NPSP is the constant new features and functionality that are released into the package. Engagement plans and levels are a great new set of features that allow you to efficiently manage outreach to your various constituencies; donors, volunteers, program participants, and more.
Get started with engagement plans and levels today or contact us if you need assistance in setting up these features in your Salesforce instance.
Here are a few other blog posts that may be of interest to you:
- Make Those Moves and Track Them Too: Salesforce Moves Management
- 5 Fundraising Processes You Should Track in Salesforce
- Enterprise Nonprofit Success with the NPSP
