Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack vs. Nonprofit Cloud…What’s the Difference?

Salesforce has so many products that it can be overwhelming and confusing to users and consultants both. Just recently, Salesforce released the new Nonprofit Cloud and it left some people scratching their heads wondering what the difference was between the new product and the current Nonprofit Success Pack many organizations are using.

In this blog, we’ll dive into the difference and help answer the question if switching is right for your organization.

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud is built on the Salesforce platform and includes features specific to nonprofit organizational needs. Some features include donor management, program management, fundraising campaigns and measuring impact and outcomes – including advanced analytics.

So, what’s included in the Nonprofit Cloud? You’ll retain access to Sales and Service – which is what you’re familiar with to track donors, volunteers, partners, etc., fundraising and basic data analytics in reports and dashboards.

Additionally, the Nonprofit Cloud data model includes Program Management, Case Management, and Outcome Management. These tools expand the use of Salesforce beyond the fundraising and development department and connect programs and services with Salesforce, as well as management to track outcomes. It’s bringing Salesforce into a 360 degree experience within your organization. 

Also included in the Nonprofit Cloud are:

• OmniStudio

  • Visualizing data in Salesforce, Branded user-guided experience (ex: Filling out surveys, Volunteer onboarding, Event registration etc.), and Transferring data to/from Salesforce.

• Live Events & Milestones

  • Track important milestones in your constituents’ lives to deepen your relationship with important supporters.

• Accounting Sub ledger

  • This is the bridge many of our clients have been asking for – which is now included with the Nonprofit Cloud. It creates reports and formats data that allows creating accounting entries from Salesforce records way easier. Accounting Sub ledger Growth Plan even integrates with many of the popular accounting software tools!

• And more to help you automate paper-based and cumbersome processes.

One of the largest differences in day-to-day use is transferring from Household Accounts (One household account with several Contacts connected) to Person Accounts. The Person Accounts allows you to decide if every single Contact must have a Household. For example, if you want to track company employees that only give through their organization, you may not need or want a household account for those individuals.

This also helps clarify current issues with blended families, extended multi-household relationships, and children that may have more than one home due to separated parents.

So, what’s the bottom line? The Nonprofit Cloud takes what the Nonprofit Success Pack does and expands the features and capabilities by including many products and features in one bundle.

What’s the downside of Nonprofit Cloud? Well, it currently doesn’t have address management, customizable rollups (think adding totals for annual giving on the Account and Contact record, etc.), and it’s unclear if Volunteers 4 Salesforce will continue to work. While many of these features will likely be added, they’re not available just yet. Additionally, the licensing cost is more expensive than NPSP licenses.

Should I switch from Nonprofit Success Pack to Nonprofit Cloud? It depends.

Current Salesforce users should likely stick with their platform. The migration is extensive and may require an entire new org since the data model setup is so different. This would require an investment of resources to setup the new system, migrate data, then train users. Additionally, some features users are familiar with may not be available on the new platform.

For new Salesforce users, it will depend on what features they are prioritizing. If it’s case management and program management, we encourage them to dive into Nonprofit Cloud. If it’s fundraising and development, they may want to use NPSP.

Ultimately, like all new Salesforce products, the Nonprofit Cloud will continue to get better and more robust over time as they build out features, add new technologies and learn from customer experiences. While we’re not encouraging everyone to jump over to the new platform just yet, we’ll keep a close eye on the progress.