More and more nonprofit organizations are using Salesforce to power their mission and create additional value for their constituents. The flexibility, openness and expansive ecosystem of the Salesforce platform allows customers to use the technology the way they want to use it. It ensures that the technology is “working for their mission” instead of the organization “working for the technology.”
A recent survey by Cloud for Good shows the quantitative positive impact of Salesforce and consulting services on our clients. 76% of our clients are reporting that Salesforce is making it easier for them to do their job and overall, we found that nonprofits are communicating more effectively, raising more funds, increasing employee performance, providing better programs or services, and engaging and strengthening their communities.
These are amazing numbers that show that regardless of your organization’s annual revenue, total number of employees or the type of services your nonprofit provides, you can drive both financial and social return on investment by adopting Salesforce. Further, we found that 96% of nonprofit organizations see potential for innovation with Salesforce. Nonprofits realize that they can still do more with the platform.
At Cloud for Good we believe that the true value of Salesforce and the real potential for innovation is through transformation of the entire organization with the adoption of technology. By integrating each department on the Salesforce platform, nonprofits are able to obtain more than just a 360-degree view of their constituents. They are able to create additional value.
A good example of creating additional value with technology is the Food Bank for New York City (FBNYC). The implementation of Salesforce Sales and Community Clouds, combined with the Nonprofit Success Package, is allowing them to double the amount of New Yorkers that they touch. They are able to provide more services, reduce wait times, and save money. Alyssa Herman the Chief Development Officer of FBNYC is calling Salesforce their “secret sauce.”
Nonprofits have a large opportunity to do more to transform their operations with Salesforce. While we identified an increasing trend of integrating financial and human resources data with Salesforce almost 70% of the organizations reported that they do not have back-end systems integrated with their instances of Salesforce.
We also found that most nonprofit organizations are also taking advantage of one Salesforce Cloud and while Sales Cloud remains the most popular (86%), more nonprofits are seeing the value of implementing solutions like Salesforce Community Cloud to connect with their constituents creating opportunities for more collaboration. Combining the powerful Salesforce Analytics Cloud with Marketing Cloud or ParGHdot ensures that nonprofits are delivering the right message at the right time to the right audience.
Finally, in order to drive innovation, organizations need to invest in their staff and not only technology. 48% of the organizations do not have a dedicated Salesforce administrator and only 20% of nonprofits reported their staff as having any Salesforce certifications.
It makes no difference if your organization has less than 10 employees or more than 500, or if your annual budget is $1M or $100M, choosing the right technology is not a decision that you should enter into lightly. We are in the midst of a major technology revolution and succeeding in this revolution does not mean consuming additional technology, or as many of our customers fear, replacing employees with new technology. Nonprofit organizations need to focus on enabling their employees, board members, and the constituents they serve to achieve more with technology. This report shows that when done right, technology could add significant value to your organization.
You can download the full report here.
Tal Frankfurt (@TalFrankfurt) is Founder and CEO of Cloud for Good, a certified B Corporation and an Inc.500 company, that works with organizations to create and implement strategic Salesforce solutions.
