Thank you to all who attended our Ask Me Anything yesterday on Wednesday, July 17th! And a special thank you to our hosts @Rob OBrien @Charlotte Kennedy @Alexandra Klinger

for facilitating such a great conversation!  

As promised, here are our the questions and answers we covered during the call:  

Q:

A: Yes, Extended Mail Merge is currently a feature exclusive to Salesforce Classic. There is no official “end-of-life” announced for Classic, but Salesforce is encouraging users to transition to Lightning Experience as part of its long-term platform strategy. This means Classic-only features like Extended Mail Merge may not receive future enhancements and could eventually be deprecated.

Extended Mail Merge enables users to create personalized Microsoft Word documents using Salesforce data. While it's technically possible to trigger it from Lightning using a custom button that links back to the Classic interface, it’s not natively supported in Lightning. 

Alternatives in Lightning:

• Use List Emails combined with Lightning Email Templates to send personalized emails to multiple contacts.
• Consider third-party tools like OmniStudio or Apsona for advanced document generation needs.

🔗 Salesforce Help Article on Mail Merge

Q: 

A: Yes, that’s correct — in Nonprofit Cloud (NPC), you can assign Gift Designations to Gift Commitments, but not directly to Gift Commitment Schedules. This is due to how the data model is structured: Gift Designations are associated at the Gift Commitment or Gift Transaction level, not at the Schedule level.

Important nuance: 

Gift Designations are stored on the

, which is separate from Gift Commitment Schedules. This means if your organization needs to track designations across scheduled payments, you won’t be able to assign them directly to each schedule. 

Recommended Workaround:

A common approach is to break down a single Gift Commitment into

, each with its own designation and associated amount. This method provides the flexibility to report on designations over time, even if tied to what would have been a single scheduled commitment. While it introduces some manual effort or automation setup, it allows for much more precise tracking and reporting. 

This workaround also ensures that downstream integrations (e.g., with your finance or grant systems) maintain clarity around how funds are designated — which is especially important for restricted gifts.

If you're working with a partner like the Red Cross (as the asker mentioned), this method can also support complex designation reporting needs across international or federated chapters. 

Q:

A: Data backup is an essential part of any Salesforce org's data hygiene and risk management strategy,  especially for nonprofits relying on donor and program data. While Salesforce provides a native weekly export tool, many organizations look for solutions that offer more automation, flexibility, and restore capabilities. 

Here are some commonly recommended options:

OwnBackup

• A popular and powerful option for full data backup and point-in-time restore functionality.
• Used by many enterprise-level orgs and praised for its incremental restore features, often a lifesaver during accidental data loss or overwrites.
• Note: It’s on the pricier side, so may be cost-prohibitive for smaller nonprofits.
• Recently acquired by Salesforce, so pricing and integration options may evolve.

Spanning

• More affordable and user-friendly, especially for smaller to mid-sized orgs.
• Offers automated daily backups and data restore capabilities.
• Feedback from the community is mixed: some love its simplicity, while others found it limited and ultimately switched to OwnBackup. 
   🔗
  Spanning on AppExchange

CloudAlly

• A cost-effective option for smaller organizations.
• Offers scheduled backups and supports Salesforce data, metadata, and Chatter files.
• Particularly useful if you're looking for secure, compliant storage with lower upfront costs.

Additional Community Insights:

• Some orgs continue to rely on the native Salesforce Data Export tool, despite it being clunky and manual, because it still provides an acceptable level of backup coverage.
• A few attendees noted that they’ve done manual backup files for years, but never had to restore them - so it’s good insurance, even if unused.

🔗 SalesforceBen: Complete Guide to Salesforce Backups

Pro Tips:

• Evaluate backup solutions not just on cost, but also on ease of restoration, compliance, and automation.
• Make sure you understand your org’s RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) needs before committing to a tool.

Q: Enjoyed attending an NPSP day recently in Chicago. Thought I heard mention of 40K install base for NPSP. Then one of our consultants said, huh, that sounds like what they said years ago. Is it still "only" 40,000 orgs using NPSP? (i.e., increasing? leaving? moving to NPC?)

A: The 40,000 orgs figure for NPSP has been cited for several years and represents the estimated number of organizations that have installed the Nonprofit Success Pack. However, that number reflects total installations

, not necessarily active, engaged, or unique organizations. 

• NPSP is not going away anytime soon. Salesforce continues to support it, and many nonprofits continue to use it successfully.
• From a consultant and community perspective, the general guidance is: “If NPSP is working well for you, there’s no pressure to migrate.”
  • Many organizations are still thriving on NPSP, and it remains a stable, well-documented, open-source solution.
  • As one AMA participant put it:
    • “My work recommends Nonprofit Cloud for new implementations, but if you're already on NPSP, we're not pushing people to move over.”

When to Consider Moving to Nonprofit Cloud (NPC):

• New implementations are often guided toward NPC to align with Salesforce’s long-term strategy.
• Dynamic Forms and conditional visibility enhancements are big draws for users considering a move.
• NPC has a different data model, so migration should be treated as a strategic, phased technology transformation, not just a lift-and-shift.

Helpful Migration Resources:

• 🔗 Cloud4Good: Timing Your Move
• 🔗 Fionta: NPSP to NPC Overview
• 🔗 NPC Migration Guides – Salesforce Help
• 🔗 NPC Best Practices Hub (Built by the Community!)
• 🔗 SalesforceBen: NPSP to NPC Comparison

Note: Some NPC objects still don’t support dynamic page layouts yet, so make sure to check compatibility before transitioning.

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Q + A CONTINUED IN THE COMMENTS!