Resources from the AMER Ask Me Anything (AMA) Session from Weds, Jan 15, 2025
Here are some of the resources shared as part of the live AMER Ask Me Anything Session
THANK YOU to our lead @Rob OBrien and our hosts @Sarah Epting and @Abigail Kosowski who handled a TON of questions - it was a great conversation as usual, the hour flew by!
These live AMAs are not recorded to allow for open, honest conversations. Here are some written follow-up resources, as promised!
QUESTION: Regarding NPSP Workflows — who is responsible for migrating to Flow? me or SF?
- Convert Workflow Rules to Flows with the Migrate to Flow Tool (Beta) Help Article
- Migrate Workflow Rules to Salesforce Flow (Using the Official Migration Tool) YouTube Video
- Migrate Workflow to flow Salesforce YouTube Video
QUESTION: What is the most effective way to log an email as an activity on a contact record while ensuring the email content is visible only to specific user profiles? If this cannot be accomplished without additional Salesforce products, are there any recommended free or low-cost AppExchange solutions to achieve this? The primary goal is to track previous conversations between Foundation staff and potential planned giving donors, enhancing cultivation efforts and building stronger relationships to increase the number of donors participating in planned giving opportunities with our organization.
- Comments from the chat: Depends on if you're using EAC vs. standard activity logging.
- Comments from the chat: Mike, if you take activity off of "controlled by parent" on sharing settings, it may help.
- Trailblazer Community discussion and another thread
- Consideration: figure out what the most restricted person would need and then you open it up when you manage your sharing settings
QUESTION: We are a small nonprofit with about 250 members. Our chapter is part of the Texas Master Naturalist™ state program. We do environmental service, education, and outreach. We have an account with Salesforce for Nonprofits and need help to convince our board that adopting Salesforce is our best path forward. We use Slack to run our chapter. In addition, we use Mailchimp, SignUpGenius, and Google for Nonprofits. Can you suggest a presentation that will help us make the case? I understand that Slack integration will improve, and Salesforce can replace Mailchimp and SIgnUpGenius, saving us money. Thanks! (Using NPSP).
- Salesforce Ben Article on Mailchimp/Salesforce
- If you’re trying to make a case to the board trying to set up automations can allow you to use best practice models in fundraising, volunteers, tracking everyone - its powerful and customizable but does require ongoing support and mainentance
- Salesforce 10 licenses are free but keep in mind additional costs, see Michael Kolodner’s blog Free like a puppy
- Trailmix: Get Familiar with NPSP
- Salesforce as the System of Truth
QUESTION: Is there anything on the roadmap to allow Agentforce to view the new Fundraising objects for external portal users? Currently, access to these objects is granted through a permission set, but the permission sets cannot be assigned to the Agent user.
- Not sure! I’ve relayed this internally and will share with more if I hear back, stay tuned.
QUESTION: We currently have an open text field to describe opportunity restrictions but need something more robust and reportable. We're looking into using General Accounting Units (GAUs) in NPSP but want to make sure we can report the information we need back out, including being able to report on GAUs at the payment level. I see references in the Salesforce materials to the possibility to configure GAUs at the payment level, but we're struggling at bit to do so. Any GAU tips, especially payment-level GAUs?
- Trailhead: Configure GAU Allocations and Payments
- Help Article: Set Up General Accounting Unites for Allocations
- Here's a link to the NPSP ERD (data model) where you can visualize how these objects (GAU, payments, allocations, etc.) relate to each other
- Apsona: https://www.apsona.com
- There is a way to manage GAU Allocations directly on payments instead of opportunities. You have to turn someone on in setup. I’m trying to find the specifics.
- There is not right or wrong way to do this in salesforce... it depends!
- Comment from the chat: Will always recommend Apsona. While pricing has gone up, it is the swiss army knife of Salesforce for a lot of things.
QUESTION: Just to clarify, when workflow rules and process builder are retired Dec. 2025, the built-in workflows in NPSP package will still work, but will no longer be supported/improved/fixed if they break in the future? So the best recommendation is to manually rebuild each of these into flows in order to future-proof our org?
- Opinion from the group: Build in flow and let the workflow rules go.
- It’s easier to go into workflow rules (see what it does and build from there)
- Suggestion: do an audit and then build; don’t worry too much
- https://automationchampion.com/ is a favorite blog on screen flows, and flows in general
- User Groups or local conferences help with training on flows sometimes
- https://admin.salesforce.com/automation
- YouTube channel: Automate this!
- Some of these very simple apps like the blood pressure tracking app featured are good jumping off points.
QUESTION: I'm curious how people are using Data Cloud in relation to fundraising, especially as it relates to marketing segmentation.
- Heller Consulting blog: Use cases for Data Cloud and fundraising
- Coastal Cloud Resources: Salesforce Data Cloud: Practical Use Cases for Nonprofits
- Salesforce: Data Cloud use cases
QUESTION: Is it better for us to use Nonprofit Cloud instead of NPSP?
- If you’re a small org and using 10 free licenses, use NPSP for small orgs - its longer tested, its easier to set up.
Resources shared from the hosts:
- Chicago Salesforce Saturday group
- Chicago Nonprofit User Group
- Salesforce Saturday Sarah Epting: Nonprofit Salesforce Saturday group
Join the next Nonprofit AMA session in February!
- AMER: Weds, Feb 19 - @Rob OBrien @Dar Veverka @Judi Sohn
- EMEA: Weds, Feb 19 - @Emma Keeling @Rebecca Heald @Gonzalo Gómez de la Cal
#AskMeAnything #Nonprofit @Nonprofit and Education MindShare