Salesforce

You’re a nonprofit, you work in the education space, you recently moved/are moving to Salesforce (great choice!) and you’re wondering… HEDA or NPSP? Salesforce HEDA or NPSP… Which one is right for me? ‍ You’re a nonprofit, you work in the education space, you recently moved/are moving to Salesforce (great choice!) and you’re wondering… HEDA or NPSP? ‍ What is NPSP/HEDA anyway? (i.e. skip this section if you know the answer) Most organizations, upon making the decision to migrate to “Salesforce” are essentially acquiring/purchasing licenses to their core offering, i.e. the Salesforce Sales Cloud. While the Sales Cloud is an outstanding product for the sales/marketing arms of most businesses, it doesn’t quite meet the needs of nonprofit organizations out-of-the-box, and the terminology used within it may send some fundraising professionals into a state of alarm. To better support the operational (and motivational) needs of nonprofit organizations, Salesforce introduced the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) some years ago which essentially adds a layer of customization upon the Sales Cloud product to convert its standard account model (with a corporate entity at its center) to the Household account model with your donors/constituents at its heart. NPSP introduces an emphasis on establishing relationships between your constituents, tracking payments on grants/donations (particularly useful for recurring donations) and so on and so forth. At the same time, it de-emphasized certain functionality from the Sales Cloud that wouldn’t be nearly as useful to nonprofits (such as Quotes) and modifies the terminology used throughout the system to be friendly to its targeted audience. The Higher Education Data Architecture (or HEDA for short) was introduced more recently to meet the needs of Higher Education institutions (universities et all) that, once again, don’t fit the standard mold of a regular corporation (target demographic for Sales Cloud) or a standard nonprofit (NPSP users). This layer of customization, also on top of the standard Sales Cloud, modifies the account model to put the student at its center and track student-related data such as course enrollments, membership to academic cohorts, clubs and so on. Noticeably missing from here (versus NPSP) is the automation around tracking recurring donations, payments etc. A different business model warrants a difference object model, and on that, Salesforce delivers. Seems pretty clear cut… What’s the dilemma? As is usually the case (unless we’re talking a House-Of-Cards situation), nonprofit organizations are driven by their mission to achieve a greater good, and may rely on fundraising to sustain their operations and achieve that mission. Some of them may take an approach that involves delivering supplemental education (financial literacy, STEM etc.) and may want to use Salesforce to track their constituents’ enrollments and progress, the courses they offer and so on and so forth. This subset of nonprofits have the luxury of choosing between two options, and yet the daunting task of making that choice… NPSP or HEDA? Isn’t the answer always “Both!”? Not so much… At the time of writing this article (and possibly for several NPSP/HEDA releases following it), expecting NPSP and HEDA to co-exist on the same Salesforce org is like asking Tom & Jerry to share a queen bed or operating an outdoor ice-skating rink in Phoenix, AZ, i.e. it won’t end well. The offerings directly conflict with each other in terms of the object model that they introduce, as well as the automations they enforce to bring that object model to life. ‍ ‍ So how does an organization that has both fundraising and education management operations go about choosing between a sophisticated fundraising solution (NPSP) or education management (HEDA)? Here are the do’s ‍ And some Do-Nots (“Don’ts” sounds so negative!) About the Author Dhruv Khattar (MBA/MSIM) is a Salesforce-certified Sales Cloud and Service Cloud consultant. He is the Director of Client Solutions at Urgensee, Inc. a Salesforce implementation partner that works with Nonprofit and Higher Education organizations across the United States. Read about our work here: https://urgensee.com/successStories ‍

data-management-for-nonprofits Are you a nonprofit leader often struggling with (or tiptoeing around) questions of how to manage your data, wondering why you’re collecting all this information that doesn’t tell you anything, or simply wondering what people mean when they talk about “Information Management” and whether it’s worth your attention? Read on… Own Your Data (or it will own YOU!) – Data Management for Nonprofits Pt. 1 ‍ Are you a nonprofit leader often struggling with (or tiptoeing around) questions of how to manage your data, wondering why you’re collecting all this information that doesn’t tell you anything, or simply wondering what people mean when they talk about “Information Management” and whether it’s worth your attention? Read on… Data Management vs the trendier “Information Management” As I was thinking through this article, I paused to wonder why writing “data management” felt so awkward and unfamiliar after working in the business & tech industry for more years than I’d like to admit. It dawned on me that it is because it’s more commonly referred to as “Information Management”. Technical definitions of “Data Management” or “Information Management” may vary from person to country to organization to dictionary but based on my experience (and often too true for smaller to medium nonprofits) “Information Management” is more of an aspirational state whereby your data is organized enough that it’s already informing you of stuff you should know about your state of affairs, fundraising goals, operations and so on. Data management, i.e. managing the raw data that you collect, would enable you to make that data “informative”. Why is “Data Management” so important? Whether you’re a smaller nonprofit with 5-10 full time staff and an army of volunteers, or you’ve left those (glorious?) days behind you and find yourself trying to remember the names of 20-50 colleagues (and their partners, dogs and children), there are multi-fold advantages to managing your data so that you can turn it into information, and turn that information into decisions. ‍ ‍ Why is Data Management so challenging? So you’ve decided that you want to take a hard look at your organization’s data, i.e. examine all the data you’re collecting, where/how you’re storing it, how you’re using it and how it relates to each other. What are the likely obstacles you’re going to run into? ‍ I want to take control of my data! Where do I begin? Based on the size, culture, resources and enthusiasm of the organization attempting to take back control, I approach the challenge with either of three (broad) approaches… Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article (because frankly, I ramble, and it’s too much to read in one go) Until then, use the comments below to share your own thoughts, tips or non-proprietary strategies for dealing with the data monster… Citations Image 1: Young woman screaming under workload – Jana Svojsova | Canon EOS 5D Mark II | 1/160s, f 16.0, ISO 100, 85 mm | Licensed under CC0 Public Domain (https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=16493&picture=overwhelmed-employee) Image 2: IT Crowd | Season 4, Episode 5 :”Bad Boys” | Dir. Ash Atalia. Perf. Chris O’Dowd, Katherine Parkinson ‍