2024 Changes in Salesforce for Nonprofits

The past year brought substantial changes to the Salesforce ecosystem for nonprofits,charities, and ngos. 2024 Changes in Salesforce for Nonprofits include a new cloud, new tools, and more. Whether you’re a casual observer or actively engaged in the nonprofit sector, staying current may feel challenging. As a Salesforce partner deeply involved in helping nonprofits navigate Salesforce, Tectonic provides insights into the current state of Salesforce for nonprofits across three key areas: Platform, Partners, and Community.

Understanding the Platform

The New Nonprofit Cloud (NPC): Introduced on March 14, 2023, NPC represents a comprehensive suite of solutions replacing previous offerings like Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), Program Management Model, Grants Management and others. Salesforce has aligned product development for nonprofits with broader industry trends, streamlining innovation and investments.
Is This a Good Thing for Nonprofits? Yes, it aligns nonprofits with broader Salesforce capabilities but introduces complexities and potential cost implications. NPC offers advanced features but may require additional expertise to leverage effectively. Features built into the initial NPC release for human services case management were based upon functionality from the health, life sciences, and public sector solutions.
Cost, Complexity, and Compatiblity: NPC is still available with free licenses but the Enterprise Edition has increased in price. With greater complexity comes a more intricate data model and technical additions that will require more knowledge. Implementing features from other sectors may impact some of the functionality you are used to with NPC.
Confusion: With two unique nonprofit solutions from Salesforce, it is more confusing to understand what is required with product announcements, support, forums, consulting services and more.
Conversion: For the time being Nonprofit Success Pack – cheaper and simpler- remains available. No announcement has made about retirement. Moving from Nonprofit Success Pack to Nonprofit Cloud is a full re-implementation and data migration, not a simple or cheap lift and shift.

Other Changes

Sunsetting of Elevate: Salesforce announced the sunsetting of Elevate in April 2023, impacting online donation and transaction processing. The product will be gone in October of 2024.
Data Cloud and Tableau: Salesforce introduced free access to Data Cloud and Tableau for Enterprise Edition and above customers at Dreamforce 2023. This certainly brings additional analytics and reporting functionality to nonprofits looking to make data-driven decisions.

Understanding Your Partners

Elimination of Nonprofit Partner Network: Salesforce.org discontinued its consulting partner network, shifting the landscape for nonprofits seeking implementation services.
NPC vs. NPSP Partners: Consultants now adapting to NPC pose challenges for nonprofits deciding between NPSP and NPC implementations. Bear in mind that just as Nonprofit Cloud is new to you, it will be to consultants and implementation partners as well.

Understanding the Community

Learning Resources and Documentation: Salesforce offers resources like the Nonprofit Cloud Recommendation Map and Trailhead modules for learning NPC.
Certifications: Existing certifications like Nonprofit Cloud Consultant remain relevant despite NPC’s introduction, with new certifications like Data Cloud Consultant emerging. Nonprofit Cloud includes OmniStudio so that could be another Salesforce certification to consider.
Jobs: Job trends in the nonprofit Salesforce ecosystem have been mixed, with resources available through platforms like the Trailblazer Career Marketplace.
Community: Salesforce’s nonprofit community remains vibrant, with user groups, online communities, and events offering valuable networking and learning opportunities.

After a year of significant changes, navigating Salesforce for nonprofits has become a bit more complex. Despite these challenges, the ecosystem continues to offer vast possibilities for leveraging technology in service of nonprofit missions.

Any content that you come across prior to March 2023 will be about the older generation of Salesforce nonprofit products. They may no longer be relevant.