Nonprofits often struggle with challenges such as limited access to resources, technology, and funding, leading professionals to perform many functions, manually. This reduces efficiency and the potential for greater impact. But advances in cloud computing have the potential to disrupt the status quo.
Cloud computing, which has driven massive digital transformation in the business world, now promises to have a transformative effect on the nonprofit sector. Innovative companies like Salesforce have developed customized solutions to support nonprofits to drive their funding goals.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud enables nonprofits to bring efficiency to workflows, improve collaboration with partners, organize and store data securely, and bring down operational costs. In this blog, we explore how nonprofits can harness the power of cloud computing to completely transform their processes and drive change.
What is Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud?
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud is designed to support nonprofits in leveraging automation and data-centricity, bringing more efficiency into workflows, raising teams’ productivity, and reducing operating costs. This is a cost-effective solution to meet many of a nonprofit’s challenges. Here’s a look at some of its unique benefits.
Data Centralization
Data is continuously being generated through multiple channels in any nonprofit’s online ecosystem. It shows up in emails, social media platforms, and fundraising platforms. CRM Technology has the capability to migrate raw data, information, and content from both internal and external destinations and store it in one location—on the cloud. Accessing information becomes a whole lot easier, from any device and location, as it is no longer local to one server, computer, or laptop.
Shift to data-driven decision-making
Nonprofits make many decisions that impact the lives of beneficiaries, volunteers, clients, donors, and other stakeholders. They must decide how to prioritize beneficiaries and best allocate resources. Fundraisers must also understand which donors to target and what are the right ones to work with. Marketing is another area that needs real-time measurability. One of the most lucrative benefits of cloud computing capabilities is access to data.
Dashboards enable professionals to manipulate data based on their exact needs and generate reports that can be easily shared with relevant stakeholders. Access to data reduces the chances of team members making ad hoc decisions. According to a survey by PwC, organizations that make data-driven decisions are three times more likely to report significant improvements in outcomes.
Easy file-sharing capabilities
Professionals use spreadsheets, video creation apps, documents, and other formats to create proposals, presentations, videos, and lists. It becomes tough to track and share a large number of documents over emails. Professionals also need to attach documents that often have size limitations. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud features include file-sharing services that make it easy to share files without ever having to worry about sending emails with attachments. A single owner can easily store and synchronize everything from documents and images to videos and presentations and share them with colleagues and other stakeholders via the cloud.
Optimize your fundraising efforts
One of the unique Salesforce for Nonprofits features is a customized approach to enhancing fundraising efforts. Donors are among the most important elements of fundraising; building trust with them is extremely important. Nonprofit Cloud fundraising enables fundraisers to easily track and maintain donor relationships. Donors can be segmented according to the frequency with which they donate as well as the ticket size of donations and other parameters. Fundraisers can automate moves management strategies accordingly. Team members can also track engagement for email campaigns through metrics such as open rates and click-through rates, allowing them to innovate in real time.
Enhanced program management
Well-designed and executed programs are the backbone on which nonprofits can deliver value to beneficiaries. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud’s Program Management Module (PMM) enables program officers to bring greater efficiency and measurability to programs. The use of PMM eliminates the need for countless spreadsheets and redundant paperwork and enables easy collaboration between various stakeholders. Program officers can monitor and track all program developments and outcomes, and refine services based on beneficiary needs. Volunteers play an important role in helping programs reach fruition. Program managers can also bring more efficiency to aspects like volunteer engagement and deployment.
Bring transparency to financial processes
Nonprofits deal with a lot of transactions of various high-ticket sizes from a wide array of constituents, high-net individuals, and individual donors. With so many donor payments passing through various channels in a nonprofit’s ecosystem, every payment must be accounted for, which can amount to a huge manual effort. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud enables integration with Salesforce Elevate and other fundraising platforms to offer a comprehensive end-to-end donation management experience from one unified platform.
Fundraising data can also be combined with Salesforce’s Accounting Subledger or integrated with other accounting partner platforms, to make it accessible for bookkeeping. These collective features bring financial transparency to all transactions.
How to use Salesforce for Nonprofits
The shift to tech-enabled solutions can prove overwhelming for nonprofit employees and may require some handholding. But early adoption can be a transformative step in a sector where multiple nonprofits work together to raise funds from similar donor pools.
By partnering with a Salesforce Consulting Partner such as DemandBlue, nonprofits can benefit from configured Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud features and seamlessly shift to a value-enhanced, data-driven platform. Since every nonprofit is unique, solutions can be customized based on its unique needs. To promote a smooth transition for employees, DemandBlue offers training programs and support.
