Non Profit Cloud for Fundraising - the future of Fundraising on the Salesforce platform

In spring 2023, Salesforce introduced the Non Profit Cloud (NPC), and fundraising functionality was added in the autumn. The first customers are currently working with this new solution from Salesforce, so it's high time for a series of articles on this "new" product and an insight into the future of Fundraising. In this first article, we take you through an overview of what to expect. Some terms may still raise some questions; if so, be sure to sign up for our mailing list at the bottom of the page so that you will be notified when the next article is published. 

Connected to the Salesforce Core

Most of our clients currently use the fundraising model from NPSP or from Converse. These are so-called managed packages installed as an add-on to the Sales or Service Cloud. With the introduction of the NPC, Salesforce has introduced a new Cloud connected to the "Salesforce Core". This "core" is also used by other industries, such as the Health Cloud for healthcare, Financial Services Cloud for the financial sector and Public Cloud for government organisations. The big advantage of this is that, as a non-profit organisation, you can benefit from all the innovative components invested in by these sectors. 

Industries Common Components

These components are also called the "Industries Common Components". So you have a completely new set of features at your disposal that have been worked on for years from other "industries" AND they are included in the NPC licences. We will explore these features in more detail in the next articles, but we would like to give you examples of two interesting features here:

• Data Processing Engine (DPE) to calculate donation data for each individual relationship. Such as, for example, total donations in the past year and the highest donation ever. This mechanism uses the computing power of CRM analytics, an application to process large amounts of data. So whereas you can now sometimes run into limits because the calculations involve too much data, with Data Processing Engine you no longer have this problem. Tests comparing calculations with the NPSP rollup tool and DPE have shown that calculations are almost 50x faster with this new technology.
• Omnistudio for creating documents or onboarding flows for volunteers. Where previously you had to buy an extra app to generate forms or letters, now Omnistudio does that for you.

Person Accounts

Another important change is that the individual is taken as the starting point for the relationship model. Whereas previously we were dealing with an account (Organisation or Household) with a linked contact, in NPC a Person Account is used by default. You can optionally link a household to this. The big advantage is that there is thus no need to add all kinds of processes by default to keep the data in sync between the household and the individual. Besides this new approach, new functionalities are also available for better visual insight into the relationship and interaction with the relationship.

Fundraising Data Model

The data model used to manage the different types of donations has been completely revamped. Best practices and experiences of non-profit organisations with the current data models have all been incorporated in this new model. The new data model uses the gift commitment, the gift schedule and the gift transaction to manage the financial relationship. This provides clear insight into upcoming payments, missed payments and recent payments. A commitment can also be paused, upgraded and downgraded, with clear insight into these adjustments. Finally, it is also possible to automatically process batches of donations recruited by partners.