Enterprise nonprofit organizations are forward-thinking, outreach-oriented, and in a perpetual pursuit of tools and services built to progress their missions. When it comes to the technology required to propel those missions, it’s imperative that enterprise organizations seek out solutions that are able to scale alongside the mission, remain flexible as needs change, and be backed by a platform with an established track record of success. For enterprise organizations looking to boost their fundraising capabilities, and not change their procedures in the process, there is no better product on the market today than Salesforce.
Here’s why…
Salesforce is Scalable
Not only is Salesforce the most scalable product on the market today, providing near-limitless growth potential and customizability, but it’s also the only platform available that won’t require your organization’s operations to change in order to implement their solutions. Large development departments simply cannot afford to modify their operations in order to meet the technology, the technology must be able to meet the organization. Salesforce is built to be plugged into, allowing your organization to run as designed, in the way operations demand, according to the best practices of your unique internal goals, not the restrictions of technology.
Take, for example, Cloud for Good implementation partner National Aquarium. Through Salesforce, the Baltimore-based nonprofit, and Maryland’s largest paid tourist attraction, can now transform their visitors into sustainers. By analyzing the various levels of engagement from each visitor, determining whether they’re consistently or only occasionally visiting, and running wealth screening to evaluate their capacity and inclination to give, National Aquarium is then able to utilize Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud to tailor messages for the right ask, on the right medium, at the exact right time for each visitor. National Aquarium began their Salesforce implementation journey through integrating their ticketing systems. Soon thereafter, they moved forward with fundraising integrations, Marketing Cloud, and even utilized Salesforce to manage their employee intranet (every employee of the Aquarium is a Salesforce user!). As each new integration took hold and led to organization benefits, a new opportunity to further that benefit presented itself.
Fellow partner JA Worldwide utilized Cloud for Good’s implementation services to assist in their mission of educating and empowering young people to transform their future and economic successes. By migrating from NGO Connect to the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), the enterprise organization was able to institute a more integrated and flexible single source of truth on all donor touchpoints, including revenue, email marketing, event attendance, advocacy involvement, and more. Featuring a network of over 465,000 volunteers serving more than 10 million students across 100 countries with unique currencies and languages, JA Worldwide required an organized, efficient, and comprehensive solution to engage with their constituents effectively. From individual donors to major gift officers, Salesforce’s Nonprofit Cloud is built to provide a scalable business model that will directly benefit their considerable fundraising efforts.
Salesforce is Flexible
One of the most important inherent advantages of the Salesforce platform is its flexibility and configurability. Salesforce allows your enterprise organization to remain malleable and quick to react to change, keying into your unique moves management and providing overlap management for your accounts and contacts. Volunteers might also be donors, students might also become donors, etc. Salesforce notes these overlaps and instinctively examines the capacities, inclinations, and behaviors of your constituents and potential donors. Salesforce provides the ability to examine a wider view of your constituents, enabling you to build and cultivate more relationships, and to customize your messaging accordingly.
Youth Villages is utilizing Salesforce to assist in their mission of helping emotionally and behaviorally troubled children across 72 locations in 20 different states. Salesforce solutions implemented by Cloud for Good have provided a more efficient and clear management of their mentors, their volunteers, their business development, and their fundraising. The ability to manage the overlap between mentors and donors is drastically impacting the way they raise funds, with different asks and journeys laid out for mentors, first-time donors, and major donors requiring a more white-glove approach.
Salesforce is All-Encompassing
The structure and stability inherent to the Salesforce platform are without question. With Salesforce forecasted to approach $20B in revenue during 2020, and 3.3M new jobs projected to be created by Salesforce by 2022, there’s no denying the platform’s continued investment in solutions. When all aspects of the ecosystem benefit, so too do your organization, your programs, your overlap, and your ability to follow through on your mission.
Enterprises want options. No one has just one app on their phone, and successful enterprises don’t want to be locked into one vendor relationship. Salesforce provides the best CRM with the Nonprofit Success Cloud (for NGOs) and GEM (for HED), a true foundation for fundraising management, with a world-class solution store called AppExchange, filled with thousands of applications built to extend your Salesforce implementation. Want to expand your online giving? You can utilize Classy, DonorDrive, or Rallybound. Seeking to incorporate more in-depth wealth screening? Try WealthEngine, iWave, or DonorSearch. The ability to plug and play solutions relevant to your organization is a unique benefit to Salesforce that should not be underestimated.
When it comes down to it, fundraising is all about building and cultivating relationships. Forming true connections with your donors or alumni represents the lifeblood of any institution, and the same holds true for the relationship between your data and your fundraising platform. Enterprise organizations have their own way of conducting business, their own way of managing their data, and modifying their operations to meet the requirements of a restrictive technology is simply not an option. With complex business processes, a high requirement for data volume, and a need for intensive integrations, Salesforce represents the most viable long-term solution for enterprise fundraising.
