Nonprofit Ask Me Anything (Global)

Hi Nonprofit Community! Weekly Roundup - Sept 11

Before I dive into the usual Friday updates, wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that it's September 11th - 25 years since September 11th, 2001. Just wanted to pause and remember those we lost, those who lost loved ones, and everyone impacted in any way. Feels weird to simply keep chugging along sometimes, so wanted to pause, acknowledge, and remember <3  

Now, let's take a look at what's going on in the Nonprofit Salesforce world this week - as we've got this event called DREAMFORCE NEXT WEEK! Even if you can't attend in SF, there are options for ways to get involved on Salesforce+ virtually, in Dreamforce 2 U events following, etc. Chime in on the comments if there are other hot topics you'd like to share too :)

⭐ What's new

• Affordable Housing Commons Workshop on Oct 22 - Kinda like a 1-day sprint/workshop happening in London in October! Learn more and register! 
• NOTE: For Dreamforce activities next week - like the Nonprofit Breakfast and Reception - registration is required. There are hundreds of people on the waitlist, so if you are planning to join, please make sure to register and show up early!!!

💻 Upcoming Events 

AMAs

• September 16 - Virtual Q&A: Nonprofit AMA (EMEA)
• September 24 - Virtual Q&A: Nonprofit AMA (ANZ) 
• October 21 - Virtual Q&A: Nonprofit AMA (AMER) 
• October 21 - Virtual Q&A: Nonprofit AMA (EMEA)
• October 14 - Virtual Q&A: Nonprofit AMA (ANZ) 

Webinars

• September 29 - Grateful Patients in 2030
• October 1 - A Reality Check on Agentforce Nonprofit: What It Is, What It's Not, and How It Actually Works 

In-person Events - Sprints & Workshops

• October 19-20 - In-person Event: Amsterdam Community Sprint (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
• October 22 - In-person Event: Affordable Housing Commons Workshop (London, England)
• November 9-10 - In-person Event: San Francisco Community Sprint (SF, CA, USA)

In-person Events - Dreamforce! 

• September 15-17 - In-person Event: Dreamforce! (SF, CA)
• September 15 - Nonprofit Breakfast at Dreamforce (REG REQUIRED)
• September 15 - Nonprofit Reception at Dreamforce (REG REQUIRED)
• September 15 - Bobablazers Meetup at Dreamforce (REG REQUIRED)
• September 16 - Nonprofit Meetup at Dreamforce (NO reg required, can show up!)

In-person Events - "Dreamforce 2 U" (After Dreamforce)

1. September 29 - Denver
2. October 13 - Chicago
3. October 15 - Atlanta
4. October 20 - Boston
5. October 22 - McLean/DC
6. October 27 - New York
7. October 29 - Seattle
8. November 5 - Austin
9. November 10 - Toronto
10. November 12 - Indianapolis

Upcoming deadline

• September 18 - Deadline: Agents of Impact Accelerator deadline to apply

💬 Recurring Gatherings

• Weekly: Coffee Chat (Fri), Nonprofit LATAM Office Hours in Spanish (Weds), Nonprofit Office Hours in Spain in Spanish (Thurs)
• Monthly: MVP Office Hours (1st & 3rd Fri), Salesforce Saturday - Nonprofit (Sat)

🎥 On-Demand Highlights

• Check out the Release Readiness Summer ’26 Highlights: Nonprofit
• Overcoming Fundraising Challenges with Nonprofit Cloud

📚 Always On Resources & Connections

• Work at a Nonprofit and want to get certified? Email nonprofitcertification@salesforce.com to request a 50% off voucher code. You'll receive an automated reply with next steps to confirm your eligibility and learn more (some limitations apply). 
• Salesforce Hosted: Nonprofit Webinar Series • Salesforce-wide Events 
• Community Hosted: Trailblazer Community Groups • "Dreamin" Conferences
• LinkedIn: Follow & tag the Salesforce Nonprofit LinkedIn page to share your work with us!
• Ongoing World Tour Participation: Want to speak at World Tour? Call for Participation
• Ohana Slack: Want to connect with our Nonprofit Community in Slack? Join the community-led Slack Workspace called "Ohana Slack" - there's a Nonprofit channel, a Coffee Chat channel (among others!), all are welcome :) 

Thank you for being part of this community, appreciate you all!

💙 Lizzy & the Nonprofit Community Team

Hello! Here is the recap from our September 9th installment of our AMER AMA. Special shoutout to this month's panelists @Roger Miller and @Bill Florio and of course our series co-host @Rob OBrien!  

Q1: Building a freelance nonprofit consulting business, struggling with imposter syndrome

A: Imposter syndrome is common among consultants, be patient with yourself and recognize the value you bring. Join peer groups like the "solo nonprofit Salesforce consultants" channel in the Ohana Slack, where job opportunities are posted regularly. The nonprofit consultant community is unusually supportive, lean on it. 

Q2: Coming from Sales Cloud, how do you make Nonprofit Cloud's (AFNP) many objects understandable for end users and reportable?

A: The transition from standard Sales Cloud to Agentforce Nonprofit (built on the Nonprofit Cloud/Industries data model) can feel overwhelming due to the shift in object architecture. Sales Cloud relies heavily on Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, and Leads — Nonprofit Cloud breaks these into more specialized, granular objects (PersonAccount, Program, ProgramEngagement, BenefitAssignment, GiftCommitment, GiftTransaction) to support Agentforce automation.

To keep this manageable for end users and effective for reporting:

• Role-Based Lightning Apps: Don't put everyone into one "Nonprofit" app — build specialized apps (Fundraising Hub, Program Delivery, Volunteer Management). A program manager should never see fundraising/gift commitment objects, and vice versa.
• Dynamic Forms & Pages: Hide complex, system-driven fields (used purely by Agentforce for context) from regular users; show fields conditionally only when relevant to the record's current stage.
• Action Launcher over Related Lists: Instead of cluttering a page with 15 related lists for junction objects, use the Industries Action Launcher so users can launch a flow ("Log a Donation," "Enroll in Program") without understanding the underlying object web.
• Standardize Custom Report Types early: Build and lock down clear custom report types (e.g., Accounts with Gift Commitments and Gift Transactions), and rename fields to friendly internal terminology so users aren't confused by standard API labels.
• Keep Agent fields behind the scenes: Agentforce tracks intent, sentiment, next-best-action via specific fields — keep these visible only to integration/AI user profiles.
• Feed the agent, protect the user: A human hates clicking through three objects to log a program outcome; an Agentforce agent can read/update/summarize those three objects in milliseconds. Use automated flows so users interact with a single simplified screen.

Pre-built report packs and regular office hours (especially for smaller nonprofits) help a lot here. Also check out the community-built Home knowledge base.   

Q3: Best uses for Cohorts in Program Management?

A: Yes — you generally need to build or customize your own reports to make Program Cohort useful; out-of-the-box reporting for cohorts in Program Management (PMM) is minimal. By itself, Program Cohort is a thin grouping layer — its entire out-of-the-box footprint is Name, Start Date, End Date, Status, Description, and a lookup on Program Engagement connecting it to people. It isn't a reporting object as delivered; it's a dimension you group other objects by. 

Q4: Where does AFNP (Agentforce for Nonprofit) still lag NPSP, and where has it surpassed it?

A: 

• Address management: Both platforms have automated address management — this isn't actually a gap.
• Community knowledge base: NPSP simply has more community-built content because it's older, not because AFNP is harder to get support for.
• Customizable rollups and recurring donations: Both platforms have native tools for these, and both can be supplemented with DLRS if you need more.
• Where AFNP has moved ahead: grantmaking, case management, and relationship-center functionality are notably stronger than NPSP.

Further reading: Salesforce Ben — The State of Salesforce Nonprofit Offerings in 2026.

Q5: A tiny nonprofit new to Salesforce (moving off Bloomerang) just signed up for AFNP — best practices for using it as a small org?

A: Depends on the org's attitude, buy-in, and whether they have the structure/support to maintain it long-term.

Best practices:

• Leverage the Power of Us Program's 10 free Enterprise licenses if eligible.
• Adopt Person Accounts early — AFNP uses standard Person Accounts instead of NPSP's legacy Household Accounts; standardize this from day one.
• Start minimalist (out-of-the-box) — avoid excessive custom dev early; AFNP's built-in Fundraising, Program Management, Volunteer Management, and Grantmaking frameworks control long-term maintenance costs.
• AFNP includes specialized AI agents like the Prospect Research Agent and Volunteer Capacity Agent — set clear parameters so small teams can automate without manual error.
• Implement role hierarchy and permission sets — don't put everyone on the System Administrator profile; use tightly scoped sets (Fundraising Operations, Program Manager) for clean, scalable security.
• Turn on MFA globally right away to protect donor/constituent data from day one.

Phase 2 — Data Modeling & Mapping (before importing): Small nonprofits often import spreadsheets exactly as-is — instead map columns to standard objects: Donors/Constituents → Person Account; Donations/Grants → Opportunity or the native Gift Transaction framework; Programs/Services → Program and Program Engagement; Recurring Giving → Gift Commitment.

Phase 3 — Out-of-the-Box Customization: Resist downloading excessive AppExchange apps or building custom code — rely on built-in tools first. Use Engagement Plans (native checklists) to standardize donor stewardship or volunteer onboarding. Use Flow Builder instead of custom code — e.g., a flow that auto-assigns an engagement plan the moment a high-tier gift transaction closes. Use the standard AFNP dashboards to track key metrics immediately without building reports from scratch.

One attendee's cautionary note: their ~30-person nonprofit had a rough NPSP implementation without a proper IT team — worth planning for the maintenance and definitions work up front, not just go-live.

Q6: Is AmpImpact still a relevant choice for an NGO, or is there something more powerful now?

A: Still relevant, but it's built on NPSP — so choosing it ties you to the legacy platform. Whether that matters depends on your org's size and complexity; larger/more complex orgs may be better served moving straight to AFNP. More discussion in the Nonprofit Trailblazer Community group

More resources:

• LinkedIn: Roger Miller - CauseMic | LinkedIn, Bill Florio - RAND Corporation | LinkedIn, Rob OBrien - Buffalo Grove, Illinois, United States | Professional Profile | LinkedIn
• Community Conference calendar
• Groups: Chicago CHINPUG, Salesforce Saturday, NYC Nonprofit User Group
• Dreamforce to U city sessions

Upcoming from the Nonprofit Community Team:

• Nonprofit activities at Dreamforce + Dreamforce "2 U" events in 10 cities
• Amsterdam Sprint — Oct 19–20
• UK Housing Workshop — Oct 22
• San Francisco Sprint — Nov 9–10

UPCOMING NONPROFIT AMAs: Register Now!

The Nonprofit Ask Me Anything is a monthly, community-led virtual Q&A - open to all nonprofit Salesforce users, all levels welcome. 

Details:

• 45 minutes, three expert hosts
• No slides, no pitches. Just community showing up for community.
• Ask questions, learn about resources, connect with fellow nonprofits.

Upcoming Sessions: 

August 

EMEA - August 19, 2026 - hosted by @Emma Keeling @Marie van Roekel @Martin Humpolec

September

AMER - September 9 at 8:15 am PT - hosted by @Rob OBrien @Roger Miller @Bill Florio

EMEA - September 16 at 10 am UK time - hosted by @Emma Keeling @Debbie Nevin @Christopher Harris

ANZ - September 24 at 9:15 am AEST- hosted by @Mia Pacey @Gourav Sood @Nicole Aebi-Moyo

October

AMER - October 21 at 8:15 am PT  

EMEA - October 21 at 10 am UK time 

ANZ - October 14 at 9:15 am Sydney time 

November

AMER - November 18 at 8:15 am PT 

EMEA - November 18 at 10 am UK time 

ANZ - TBC

Stay in the loop: Join the Ask Me Anything group in the Trailblazer Community for future sessions and post-session resource roundups. These sessions are not recorded.  

@Nonprofit and Education MindShare

Hi everyone, 

I am struggling with how to easily display changes in these particular fields on our case record. I enabled field history tracking for the following fields:

. Case managers explained that these SMART goals change during the time they have with each client. They want some way to view changes in those fields, aka, see some way to view old goals while having a place to enter new goals.  

I've tried using a screen flow, but it's a bit too advanced for me. I've also created a report, but did not realize I can only display charts on a record.   

Any ideas are appreciated! Thank you!   

Hello! Thank you to all who joined our July ANZ Ask-Me-Anything yesterday on July 22nd. Special shoutout to our July panelists ~ @Gourav Sood @Nicole Aebi-Moyo @Daniel Klarnet! 

Here's the recap -  

Q: Working on an implementation for a US/India-based nonprofit — what's the best way to implement across both regions? Keep them separate?

A: Great org strategy question — and that's exactly how you should frame it: as an org strategy decision. A few key factors to work through: 

• Data residency & data protection: Where does your data need to live, and what are the legal/compliance requirements in each country?
• Data visibility: Do you want the US and India teams to see each other's data? How much cross-exchange is needed?
• Shared business process: How much of your business process is the same across both geographies? If processes are highly shared but locations differ, two orgs may be the right call — but if you go that route, invest in a strong code maintenance practice so a single codebase deploys to both orgs consistently.
• Licensing: This will always be the second major impact factor after data residency.

This is a big, careful decision — take your time and assess thoroughly before committing to a direction. 

Helpful resource: 

Salesforce Enterprise Architecture: Multi-Org Strategy

Q: We're implementing NPC and plan to aggregate recurring gift (RG) transactions older than 24 months into yearly summaries. What's your suggestion around OOB gift commitment summaries — should we upload there and have donor gift summaries pull from that data?

A: Data migration at high volume is hard — here's how to approach it cleanly: 

• Turn off validation rules before loading to avoid unnecessary failures during migration
• Clean and transform your data outside of Salesforce first — get it fully prepped before touching the org
• Use Bulk API for high data volume loads
• Load in sequence: parent records first, then child, then child of child — then run DPE after
• For the gift commitment itself: the last 24 months come in as individual gift records, but for historical data beyond that, you'll want to populate the gift commitment summary directly first, then populate the related records after

The concern to validate is around the total donation amount on the gift commitment — make sure your approach accounts for how that figure gets populated given what you're bringing in vs. aggregating. 

Q: Follow-on — why did you decide not to bring in the full 25 years of data?

A: Storage costs, primarily. The decision was made to bring in cash donations without pulling in all 12+ transactions per donor going back decades. The goal is cost reduction — and having a data warehouse means that full historical detail isn't lost, it's just living outside Salesforce where it's more cost-effective to store at that volume.

Q: Is there an Australian charity successfully using NPC end-to-end — fully deployed — where you could make a donation and experience what it actually feels like? (Jess Mac, Jessica@blazeyourtrail.org)

A: Worth reframing the expectation here a little: NPC's biggest impact isn't necessarily on the donor-facing experience — it's on the internal experience. The front-end donation flow a donor sees is often driven by a third-party tool or Experience Cloud, not NPC directly. 

Q: Follow-up: Why would you expect the experience to be different?

A: If what you're looking for is a comparison — a list of Australian charities using Salesforce vs. other CRMs to see the difference in experience — that's a great research angle. The distinction is less about what the donor sees on the surface and more about how the organization manages relationships, reporting, and programs behind the scenes. Happy to help dig into examples if that's useful! 

Q: We just started using AFNP — any tips for getting into Outcomes Management without setting ourselves up for problems from the start?

A: Before touching the data model, make sure your non-technical frameworks are solid first. Do you have your outcomes, indicators, and program logic clearly defined outside of Salesforce? Getting that right on paper (or in a doc) first will make the configuration much cleaner. 

Once you're ready to build:

• NPC Program Management Data Model
• Outcome Management Data Model

Also — don't sleep on AI tools like Claude for working through data model questions, mapping logic, or even drafting your framework structure. It can be a surprisingly effective thought partner for this kind of work. 

Q: Who starts with AI when you have something to tackle? (Question for the group)

A: Highly recommend starting here if you haven't already: 

AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations

Q: What's your one tip for a great new user onboarding experience?

A: Get people involved from the very beginning — don't wait until go-live to introduce users to the system. Showcases, workshops, and sandbox access during the build phase go a long way. Identify your supporters and your skeptics early, and bring both into the process intentionally. 

A few other things that make a real difference: 

• Write all training materials from the business user's perspective first — not from the system's perspective
• At go-live, run open office hours where someone from the team is available to answer drop-in questions in real time
• Budget for fast follows — those small fixes and quick wins that users identify right after go-live matter a lot for adoption
• Point new users to Trailhead, how-to videos, and any internal resources you've built — the more self-serve options they have, the better

Reminder! Upcoming Nonprofit AMA in July (ANZ timezone) and more sessions in August! 

The Nonprofit Ask Me Anything is a monthly, community-led virtual Q&A - open to all nonprofit Salesforce users, all levels welcome. 

Details:

• 45 minutes, three expert hosts
• No slides, no pitches. Just community showing up for community.
• Ask questions, learn about resources, connect with fellow nonprofits.

All Upcoming Sessions: 

July

ANZ - July 22, 2026 - hosted by @Gourav Sood @Nicole Aebi-Moyo @Daniel Klarnet

August

AMER - August 5, 2026 - hosted by @Rob OBrien @Melissa Hill Dees @Libby Ziemelis

 ANZ - August 5, 2026 - hosted by @Mia Pacey @Bethany Smith @Gourav Sood  

EMEA - August 19, 2026 - hosted by @Emma Keeling @Marie van Roekel @Martin Humpolec

Stay in the loop: Join the Ask Me Anything group in the Trailblazer Community for future sessions and post-session resource roundups. These sessions are not recorded.  

@Nonprofit and Education MindShare

FYI @APAC Nonprofit Customers