Discover How to Volunteer Your Salesforce Skills
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain how Salesforce serves nonprofit and educational institutions.
- Describe the role of pro bono in supporting organizations with the use of Salesforce.
- Recognize when pro bono is appropriate (and when it’s not).
You Have Skills!
We’re here to tell you that you have the skills. That’s right—you have Salesforce skills, and you can use them to help nonprofit and educational institutions do more good. Pro bono is an opportunity to use your Salesforce expertise for good and gain a new perspective on how organizations use Salesforce to power their missions.
Wait, nonprofits use Salesforce? Of course, they do! Nonprofits and educational institutions use Salesforce in different capacities—from tracking their donations to managing relationships, just to name a few. There are 40,000+ nonprofit and educational institutions that power their missions with Salesforce.
Let’s take a look at a real-life example.
Boston Day and Evening Academy (BDEA) is a school like no other. Every single one of its students has struggled academically or has felt lost, unsafe, or unengaged in previous schools. Check out how BDEA uses Salesforce to help re-engage students in their education.
Pretty awesome, right? Well, it gets even better. Behind the scenes, Salesforce’s very own Jarad Caico and Nitin Kohli served as pro bono volunteers, working with BDEA and their consulting partner to update their Salesforce org. They were BDEA’s trusted advisors, helping them navigate challenges and guiding their progress. Jarad and Nitin specifically helped BDEA understand how to effectively customize their contact record types and report on their contacts.
Thanks to some super-powered help from Jarad and Nitin, BDEA now has a single, consolidated view of each student and a clearer picture of each student’s grades, attendance, and challenges. New reporting capabilities help identify early signs of a student’s struggles and shed light on interventions to help keep students engaged.
So now you see just one example of how powerful pro bono can be! You can use your Salesforce skills to help an organization directly further their mission but like all powers there is great responsibility. Let’s learn more about how nonprofit and educational institutions work with Salesforce.
Working With Salesforce
Nonprofit and educational institutions get access to many of the same tools offered to commercial companies and we have industry specific solutions: Nonprofit Cloud and Education Cloud
Where do these organizations start?
- All eligible organizations receive 10 donated Enterprise Edition Lightning CRM licenses through the Power of Us Program.
- They also receive deep discounts on purchases of additional licenses, products, and services.
- Eligible organizations typically sign up for a 30-day trial of Salesforce with one of our industry solutions pre-installed.
- The free trial converts to a live instance if they decide to continue with Salesforce.
While our donation and discount programs make Salesforce accessible to nonprofit and educational institutions, many can’t afford all of the expertise needed to make the most of Salesforce technology. Resources can be so tight that some nonprofit and educational institutions can’t afford a dedicated system admin. Instead, admin duties become additional responsibilities for an already overworked staff member.
While budgets are tight, especially in the nonprofit sector, we do encourage organizations to work with a Salesforce certified consulting partner to complete their Salesforce implementation(s). Certified partners have deep knowledge of the nonprofit and education sectors and are experts when it comes to implementing Salesforce Nonprofit and Education industry solutions.
Even after a successful implementation, some organizations struggle to take full advantage of basic features and functionality because they lack the time or expertise needed to configure them. We’re talking about creating page layouts and fields, setting up useful reports and dashboards, and automating business processes. And that’s where you come in! Thousands of nonprofit and educational institutions turn to pro bono volunteers for help with the basics, so they can do more good with the platform.
Do No Harm
Volunteering your time and talent is one of the most impactful ways to give back. However, it’s critical for you to commit to doing no harm before you start a pro bono project with a nonprofit or educational institution. In other words, don’t be a pro bono villain!
What does this mean exactly? Well, it means that you commit to using your current skills and expertise to help an organization make the most of Salesforce technology. You shouldn’t view a pro bono project as your chance to gain experience, test new skills or experiment on an organization’s instance.
Nonprofits and educational institutions play a vital role in our communities. They’re often underfunded and understaffed, which means they probably won’t be able to fix mistakes that you make. If something goes wrong and you don’t have the expertise to fix it, you might hurt the organization’s ability to serve their community and achieve their mission.
The stakes are just too high to try untested skills on a nonprofit’s or a school’s org. Please, only volunteer your current Salesforce expertise.
Doing no harm also means following through on the commitments that you make. Nonprofits and educational institutions probably won’t have the expertise or bandwidth to complete your project if you depart before it’s finished.
Now that you’ve discovered ways to give back using your Salesforce skills and have committed to doing no harm, you’re ready to learn more about Salesforce industry solutions for the nonprofit and education sectors.
Resources