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Explore the Fundraising Account Actionable List Template

Learning Objectives

In this project, you'll:

  • Clone and activate the Fundraising Account Actionable List Template.
  • Create an actionable list definition.
  • Automate an actionable list dataset update with a schedule-triggered flow.
  • Create an actionable list.
  • Manage an actionable list.
Note

This module discusses a feature available in Fundraising, an integrated platform solution included in Nonprofit Cloud and Education Cloud. It doesn’t cover fundraising solutions available in managed packages such as Nonprofit Success Pack.

Before You Start

Before you start this module, consider completing the following recommended content.

Make Fundraising Portfolios Actionable

Securing major donations in nonprofit fundraising and higher education advancement is all about relationships. Your fundraisers work to build relationships between donors and your organization or institution over long periods of time to secure large, transformational gifts.

The problem is scale: Each fundraiser is responsible for an entire portfolio of donors. They have so many relationships to manage that it can be especially difficult to get a unified view or focus on the most promising prospective donors.

Fortunately, there’s a solution for fundraisers who use the Philanthropy and Partnerships app in Fundraising: Actionable Lists. Actionable lists help fundraisers organize relationships and—you guessed it—act on them. As an admin, you can use a template included in Fundraising to quickly create an actionable list and customize it to your organization’s needs.

Setting up a simple actionable list is the next task for Elle Sato, the Salesforce admin at Hunger No More International (HNMI), an international nonprofit working to fight hunger. Elle is working with HNMI’s development director to set up the first actionable list for the organization’s fundraisers, especially those working with major donation prospects. In this project, you follow along with Elle as she configures the actionable list using the template included in Fundraising.

Before you get started, explore some background about actionable lists and how they work.

Meet Actionable Lists

Actionable lists are a curated view of accounts or other records. You can work on accounts directly from the actionable list, with special statuses that track your progress. For example, this image shows four accounts with the New status.

An actionable list with four members, all in New status.

Actionable lists are a feature of Actionable Segmentation, which gives you tools to curate records based on information stored across Salesforce objects.

An actionable list definition makes a dataset available for an actionable list and defines the columns and status values for the list. The definition gets its dataset from a Data Processing Engine definition. Data Processing Engine is a tool that transforms data in your Salesforce org. Fundraising includes the Fundraising Account Actionable List Template in Data Processing Engine that you can use to quickly create an account dataset for actionable lists. Clone the template, activate it, and then use it to create an actionable list definition.

So, to create an actionable list:

  1. Set up the Data Processing Engine definition
  2. Create an actionable list definition
  3. Create an actionable list from records that the actionable list definition filters.

The steps for creating an actionable list.

As an admin, you set up the Data Processing Engine definition and the actionable list definition. You can train your users—such as fundraising and advancement managers—to create actionable lists and assign them to fundraisers. Those fundraisers access these lists through the actionable list, the Outreach List tab, or Actionable List Engagement.

In this project, you complete all of these steps to better understand how the elements work together.

Knowledge Check

Ready to review what you've learned? The knowledge check isn’t scored—it’s just an easy way to quiz yourself. To get started, drag the tool in the left column next to its function on the right. When you finish matching all the items, click Submit to check your work. To start over, click Reset.

Sign Up for a Developer Edition Org with Nonprofit Cloud

To complete this module, you need a special Developer Edition org that contains Nonprofit Cloud and our sample data. Get the free Developer Edition and connect it to Trailhead now so you can complete the challenges in this module. This Developer Edition is designed to work with the challenges in this badge, and may not work for other badges. Always check that you’re using the Trailhead Playground or special Developer Edition org that we recommend.

  1. Sign up for a free Developer Edition org with Nonprofit Cloud.
  2. Fill out the form:
    • For Email, enter an active email address.
    • For Username, enter a username that looks like an email address and is unique, but it doesn't need to be a valid email account (for example, yourname@example.com).
  3. After you fill out the form, click Sign me up. A confirmation message appears.
  4. When you receive the activation email (it might take a few minutes), open it and click Verify Account.
  5. Complete your registration by setting your password and challenge question. Tip: Save your username, password, and login URL in a secure place—such as a password manager—for easy access later.
  6. You’re logged in to your Developer Edition.

Now connect your new Developer Edition org to Trailhead.

  1. Make sure you're logged in to your Trailhead account.
  2. In the Challenge section at the bottom of this page, click the org name and then click Connect Org.
  3. On the login screen, enter the username and password for the Developer Edition you just set up.
  4. On the Allow Access? screen, click Allow.
  5. On the Want to connect this org for hands-on challenges? screen, click Yes! Save it. You’re redirected back to the challenge page and ready to use your new Developer Edition to earn this badge.

Finally, for this project to work, disable and then enable Data Pipelines in your Developer Edition org.

  1. From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter data pipeline, and then select Getting Started.
  2. Disable Data Pipeline.
  3. Enable Data Pipeline.

Your Developer Edition org is ready for the project.

Clone the Fundraising Account Actionable List Template

First, set up your Data Processing Engine definition. Elle starts with the Fundraising Account Actionable List Template in Data Processing Engine. It’s helpful to have a high-level understanding of how this template definition works, even if you don’t have to get into the details.

Examine the elements in the template definition.

The Data Processing Engine template definition.

The Data Processing Engine definition uses Data Source nodes to first collect data from accounts, contact profiles, donor gift summaries, and other records.

Note

This Data Processing Engine template definition works for both person accounts and business accounts. For details about how to map individuals and households in Fundraising, complete the Stakeholder Management in Nonprofit Cloud module.

The definition then transforms and combines the source data using the Append and Join nodes, until there’s a unified view of accounts. Finally, the definition uses a Writeback Object node to store the data in an Analytics dataset. Your actionable list definition and actionable lists use this dataset. Cool, right?

The Fundraising Account Actionable List Template can’t be activated because it’s marked as a template. Clone the template to activate it.

  1. From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter data processing, and then select Data Processing Engine.
  2. Select Fundraising Account Actionable List Template.
  3. Click save-as or delete-menu and select Save As.
  4. Specify these details.
    • Name: Major Gifts Fundraising Account Actionable List
    • API Name: This field auto-populates with Major_Gifts_Fundraising_Account_Actionable_List
    • Process Type: Actionable List
  5. Save your work.

You can now activate the new Data Processing Engine definition. Click Activate to make the Data Processing Engine definition available for Actionable Segmentation.

After the definition is active, click Run Definition, then Next, then Next, then Run Definition to create an initial dataset. It takes a while to create the dataset. You can also check Monitor Workflow Services in Setup to see its status.

In this unit, you learned how actionable lists work, set up your special Developer Edition org, and cloned the Fundraising Account Actionable List Template. In the next unit, you use this active Data Processing Engine definition to create an actionable list definition and create a flow to make sure your dataset is always up to date.

Resources

Verify Step

+100 points

You’ll be completing this project in your own hands-on org. Click Launch to get started, or click the name of your org to choose a different one.

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