Thanks to everyone who joined the Nonprofit Ask Me Anything on Weds, May 17!
This was AMA #1 of 2 this week!
Special thanks again to our amazing hosts @Barbara Christensen @Nick Lindberg and @Rob OBrien.
A recap on the questions + responses shared:
QUESTION: I have a report from April to today. How do I have a column showing the sum of the donors giving during that period? TY!
- Might want to change the type of report you are doing, and instead, report on opportunities
- Opportunity: might be renamed to donations, where you record the gift that
- Report type: Contacts with opportunities
- Use the closed date within a certain time frame
- Add a summary column
- Also this reports workbook help article
- One other good module on fundraising reports with NPSP
- Here is a good trailhead module on reports and dashboards
- Reports and Dashboards group
QUESTION: My question is regarding validation rules on the HH name field and the auto-creation process
- Added from the comments: We have the same problem at our org. We created two separate page layout sections: 1) households and 2) primary job & organization. We also created a lookup filter on the Organization name field to only show household record type. we also added the following help text on the Account name field: "Household Name. If this field is left empty when a new Individual is created, a Household will be automatically created and tied to an Individual."
- Validation rules fire first
- Might sit with your users to see what they are doing first to see what they are trying to use, make sure they see it to use it
QUESTION: What’s most important to know about Salesforce for someone who is brand new to both the nonprofit world AND Salesforce?
- Initial question around object labels: You can change the object labels (ex opportunities). Salesforce has standard and custom objects. NPSP has documentation for how to rename custom objects
- Now, onto addressing how to get started...
- 1) Join a user group! Find a user group near you: https://trailblazercommunitygroups.com. There's a meeting on Friday if you'd like to join!
- 2) Learn on Trailhead! Heres a nonprofit cloud trailmix too
- 3) Join groups, and connect with other nonprofits using salesforce! Here are all the nonprofit-focused groups in the trailblazer community (as it can be overwhelming!): Pro-tip, bookmark this Nonprofit Cloud filter to the nonprofit groups!
QUESTION: First time in this group as we are implementing in an org where I'm consulting as Project Manager. Curious as to how many here are using Nonprofit Cloud? We decided to go with that instead of NPSP and am unsure as to how many orgs are in this small community of early adopters.
- When choosing between Nonprofit Cloud and NPSP… It depends!
- Consultants are not experts yet on the new Nonprofit Cloud, will come with time
- A few user groups are having meetings this week to review the new Nonprofit Cloud, like this one on Friday if you'd like to join!
- Read this community-written blog post on this subject by Michael Kolodner
- Consider the sophistication of your users
QUESTION: Our org is about 4 years old and I am seeing notices about the retirement of old API platforms. Is this something I can fix being a solo admin for a small org or should I try to find a developer and contract to fix this before 2025?
- Trailblazer community question/thread to review
- Find a partner!
- If anyone is curious about new Nonprofit Cloud updates - make sure to join the Nonprofit Release Readiness group, this is where our team is sharing big updates/changes see here.
- Group filter for Nonprofit groups in the Trailblazer Community
- Topic for #NonprofitHelp follow NonprofitHelp
QUESTION: We're in the process of moving historic data over from a legacy system. We tracked activities (personal emails, phone calls, meetings) as well as notes in the legacy system. I have done some research and I can see that Notes can be imported in a fairly straightforward way but I haven't seen a great solution for importing historic activities. Do you know how I can import those so they display on contact/account records Activities object?
- No budget to add anything and Apsona is a paid product (can do a free trial)
- From my understanding Import: Activities can only migrate 18 months worth unless you have Field Audit Trail.
- I think dataloader.io has a free version too
- Magic Mover is free (from old notes to new notes), see the App Exchange
- Dataloader.io: https://dataloader.io/
QUESTION: One of my clients is looking to integrate Xero or Quickbooks to SFDC. It is “sold” as being easy, but I am finding statements from eg Breadwinner, that their software focuses on Invoice objects and doesn't work for donations. Has anybody got top tips for what combinations of accounting software and integration software work best - and what didn't work?
- First, what's the use case?
- What has worked? Accounting software with NPSP
- Quickbooks can get messy quickly
- NPSP has an accounting sub-ledger - but this is a paid solution, keep this in mind, see the help article & join the group if you're interested to learn more
What's up next?
- These are hosted every 3rd Weds and 3rd Thursday of the month
- Keep an eye on the Events Calendar HERE for all upcoming sessions like this
- Upcoming sessions
@Barbara Christensen @Nick Lindberg @Rob OBrien anything I missed?
Let us know if you have any questions! See you next time 🙂
I'm so sorry I missed it but promise to add to my calendar from now on!
