Hi, I'm a non-profit staff starting to understand Salesforce, and I need to upload all donor information for this year and my goal is to send thank you emails to everyone before the end of the year. My questions are 1) There seems to be a separate object for "Recurring Donations" and what are the pros and cons of using that with Opportunities instead of just including all recurring donations in Opportunities? From what I've found, if the donation is open-ended, you can't use a standard Salesforce Opportunity with multiple payments, because the number of payments on an Opportunity in the NPSP is fixed. You must use the Recurring Donation process. But I wasn't sure how Opportunities and Recurring Donations work together if we'd like to see a list of all donations and one-time donations are all in "Opportunities" and Recurring are in "Recurring Donations". Also if there are donations that were given multiple times but not on a regular basis (for example on the same day of each month), do I have to insert them separately on my opportunities? 2) I wasn't sure how the Opportunities and Contacts work. So if I insert the "Primary Contact" in a new Opportunities entry, and import all information of all donors, will I be able to send mass emails through the Opportunities Object later on? Apologies for the long questions and thank you very much for your help in advance. I'm struggling with all these concepts. Thank you.
Here are my thoughts:
1) you'll have to see what you need, ask other people here (in its own post, focused on a single topic "For an organization that conducts campaigns with church congregations would you suggest any customizations?". i don't have experience in your space. Posts with multiple questions are hard to answer.
2) There is only an advantage if you are using salesforce to track multiple payments per donation. I think it is simple to track each payment as a donation.
3) Zapier is the automation tool to import the payments. You can import payment manually if you like, using the NPSP batch import tool. Free.
4) Yes, I think the personal touch is better. You can save time by using an email template, and then personalizing it before you send it... Or just create the content from scratch for each email. It is up to you/your brand preference.
