Get users involved

Getting users involved from the get go of your Salesforce project will bring about a sense of ownership. We recommend getting these users involved in requirement gathering and design sessions and also asking for their opinion on what a system should deliver. We also recommend a CRM champion from each team so that they can help team mates use the system.

Running retrospectives and surveys once the system has been built will also reassure users that their input matters and will help with the continuous improvement of your system.

User Training

Your users will need comprehensive training sessions and/or materials to be able to use the system correctly and confidently. If this is not invested in, you can find that users may lose confidence in the system and can potentially use it incorrectly, something that can have detrimental effects to the quality of your data.

The following techniques can be employed to ensure users are fully trained:

• Run interactive training sessions and demos where users can follow along and ask questions
• Creating training videos that can be referred to
• Create a user manual or knowledge base with step by step instructions
• Create in app guidance

Get the system right

It is important that your CRM system is correctly configured according to your specific requirements and system best practices. If the system does not correctly meet requirements you may find that users will end up reverting back to legacy system or poor workarounds which will cost you heavily in the long run. On the other hand, if you invest time and money into your system, ensuring that everything is built and automated according to your exact requirements this will keep your users engaged and increase confidence.

Make it look nice

User interface might not have been so important 20 years ago, but it is a vital part of user adoption in the current day & age. If your CRM setup is not configured to have a clean and accessible interface, users may look at other options and start to question design choices. Try to ensure that relevant data is displayed quickly and easily and that users do not have to run through multiple clicks to carry out simple tasks.

Page rendering speed is also very important, try to make the most out of the available tools you have to ensure that pages load quickly for users.

Asking users to set their user pictures can also make a big difference as it will give the system a more personal feel.

Analyse

To be able to drive adoption, you will need to be able to analyse adoption metrics. This will allow you to identify which teams or users are struggling and which areas need improvement/training. A few ways this can be done include:

• Creating/installing user adoption reports & dashboards
• Run surveys and feedback sessions
• Speak to those who are struggling to find out what barriers they are facing
• Monitor data quality

Automate

Automation can save your users having to manually carry out repetitive task. Investing in getting automation right can increase user buy-in if they can see the positive impact it has to their daily tasks.

Subledger Integrations

A subledger application can automatically create ledger entries for each donation that is created in your salesforce environment. For example, if a donor has donated £150 and has asked £50 to be allocated to a housing fund and the remaining £100 to be allocated to a hot meals fund, the following ledger records will be created:

You can also map funds to GL codes and additional values that you require. This data can then easily be exported and then imported into your accounting tool (if your tools allows importing of ledger entries) or you can even opt to automate the process so that entries are automatically created.

This image explains how the Salesforce tool can create subledger records to connect accounting and finance.

Bank File Reconciliation

A finance team, as part of bookkeeping reconciliation will need to use statements from their banks to identify and match payments on their bank accounts with their own internal payment records. This is an important step because donations can sometimes be missing from Salesforce but may show up on a bank statement. One example is if a donation is made directly to a back account but was never spotted and created into Salesforce. This will create discrepancies between the bank and Salesforce.

Doing reconciliations manually can be a slow, painstaking process and can also fall prone to mistakes and human error. This is why you may want to consider implementing a tool like Findock:

Findock is a tool that can be used to easily reconcile your bank statements with Salesforce. It even includes a feature called guided matching that can guide you through the matching process and even help you create missing donations quickly.

Other Types of connectors

There are other types of connectors/integrations available that may be built specifically for your accounting tool.

One example is breadwinner for xero which can be used to easily generate invoices in xero straight from the opportunity/donation record in Salesforce. This can be particularly useful if you raise invoices for donations or provide goods/services.

How to get started

If you are interested in implementing one of the integrations mentioned, or need help deciding what you need, feel free to get in touch with us, we are happy to help or send more resources your way.

How wrong can it go?

Having a Salesforce at your organisation is like owning a Lamborghini. You wouldn’t let a learner driver or someone without a licence drive one or a back street mechanic to repair one, so why should you let someone who may not hold the relevant certifications and experience make changes to your Salesforce org? This being said, there are some areas where a volunteer can definitely add value and this is something we will discuss in more detail below. You may come across a rare gem who is fully certified, experienced and happy to help free of charge, in which case this might be someone who you may be able to bring in with more confidence. If you do decide to let an unqualified volunteer near your org, here are some of the things that can go wrong:

• Poorly built automation can incorrectly alter your data
• Poorly built configuration with create technical debt which will cost more money in the future to resolve
• Poorly built configuration might reduce user adoption and can act as a barrier to users being comfortable with the platform
• Your Salesforce configuration may not be according to best practices and standards.
• Your data can be misused by the volunteer and fall into the wrong hands.

How a volunteer can help

We understand that volunteers are an instrumental part of a charity’s success. There are multiple areas where a volunteer can definitely help with your salesforce implementation:

• Gathering and documenting solution requirements.
• Documenting charity processes on a tool like Lucidchart or Microsoft Visio.
• Creating training materials like user manuals and videos.
• Creating other documents and resources (like a data dictionary).
• Cleaning data.
• Creating Reports & Dashboards.
• Creating and updating records.
• Creating new users and resetting passwords.
• Creating List Views.

If you do decide to give a volunteer access to your data we recommend that you get a signed data protection policy/agreement with the volunteer and if you are planning to give access to the Salesforce org you assign them a profile with access to only the data and permissions they need.

Where you should seek expert help

There are some areas where only experts should be involved:

• Configuration changes to fields, objects and layouts
• Security/permission changes
• Validation Rules, Approval Processes
• System Automation
• Data migration
• Data model changes
• Integrations
• Creating Report Types

Conclusion

There are many areas where a volunteer can help add value to your Salesforce Implementation and if you find one that can help with the items listed above, we definitely recommend bringing them in to reduce the cost of your implementation.

You may also come across an experienced volunteer who is willing to give back and help free of charge. In this case we recommend verifying that the volunteer is experienced and holds the relevant certifications (in particular Salesforce Administrator & Nonprofit Cloud Consultant) before letting them work on the more technical areas.

Otherwise, we definitely recommend using a trusted consultancy or trained professional, it may save you more money in the long run!

Many key workers , particularly front line NHS staff were working unimaginable hours away from their families and many elderly were in isolation due to the needed lockdown rules at the time.

It was at this point that Al Haadi Youth decided something needed to change, and introduced the Hujjat Iftaar scheme to deliver warm & fresh cooked meals to community members in northwest London and its surrounding areas, completely free of charge.

Data collection with FormAssembly

Once the details of the scheme were finalised, the team decided they needed a data capture tool that would allow the secure collection of individuals who needed meals and how many meals they would need. We recommended getting a FormAssembly licence so that we could build powerful, secure and dynamic forms to collect this information from those who wanted to sign up.

FormAssembly provided the scheme with the following benefits:

• Data Prefill allowed applicants to reapply every week without having to repopulate the same data again and again
• Integration with Stripe & Paypal allowed applicants to make a donation directly from within the form
• Integration with Salesforce CRM allowed the data to be automatically pushed to the database for analysis

Data Analysis & Manipulation with Salesforce

Once the data had been collected via the FormAssembly form, it was automatically pushed into the Salesforce environment we set up for AHY. Using Salesforce, the team were able to:

• Run reports on how many meals were required and assign these requests to local community kitchens
• Categorise requests by territories so that these can be assigned to drivers
• Analyse which applicants were the most vulnerable so that meals can be prioritised accordingly
• Update the system with cancellations and adjustments
• Send automated emails to applicants if their request for a meal was successful or if they were put on a waiting list
• Run reports and dashboards to be able to easily assess the impact of the scheme
• Export the data to a delivery planning tool to allow for meals to be delivered in an optimised & sustainable way.

Salesforce Reports & Dashboards were used to quickly analyse the data in a visual format.

Project Wins

With the combination of the tools above, we were able to help AHY with the following:

• Recruit over 200 volunteers
• Deliver 37,000 warm meals to vulnerable members of the community
• Save the team hundreds of hours in data collection & processing

Still using spreadsheets?

Spreadsheets are an amazing tool and can be very useful when it comes to storing and analysing data. This being said, as your organisation scales your spreadsheets will become harder and harder to use and manage. If you are still using spreadsheets as part of your processes, it is definitely a good time to start looking into a well design database solution for nonprofits.

Salesforce CRM Features that will revitalise your charity

Salesforce CRM is a leading database that is used by thousands of charities worldwide. The following features make Salesforce a no-brainer when it comes to picking your next CRM solution:

Centralised Donations

Charities collect donations from multiple channels. This includes donations made via Paypal, crowd fundraisers like GoFundMe, bank transfers, direct debits, cash payments and postal cheques. This data is scattered across several different channels and many charities do not have a centralised location where all of these donations can be seen and analysed.

CRM systems comes into play here by allowing a 360 view of all these donations. Salesforce NPSP has an open API meaning that these these donations can be automatically added to the database. They can also be easily entered manually using ‘Gift entry’ or ‘NPSP Data Importer’ features.

Contact Management

Charities work with a range of different contacts. This includes:

• Supporters
• Donors
• Members
• Stakeholders
• Volunteers

A CRM system like Salesforce allows charities to have one place with all the details of these contacts.

Fundraising and programmes

A charity will run multiple fundraising campaigns and programmes throughout the year. A CRM system will allow the ability to budget, store and analyse these events. This data can easily be used in AGMs and yearly reports and fundraisers can use this information to improve future programmes.

Activity Tracking

Charity staff members run through many tasks and activities on a daily basis. A CRM system will help staff members stay on top of calls, tasks, emails and other interactions. Salesforce Chatter is a communication tool built into the platform and Salesforce Activity allows tasks, calls and emails to be linked against database records.

Reporting & Analytics

Having thousands of records of data can only be useful if you are able to easily analyse it in a visual format. In Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud you get out of the box reports and dashboards that you can use to easily analyse your data. You can also build custom reports and dashboards and run and/or export them when needed.

Accounting & Ledger

Being able to reconcile between donations and your banking software is a cumbersome tasks for many charities. With Salesforce Accounting Subledger, you are able to easily connect fundraising with finance.