Announcing the Newest Addition of Nonprofit Cloud: Grantmaking 

In March we announced our newest innovation in Nonprofit Cloud and today we announced that it can be extended with fully integrated grantmaking capabilities on July 18th. 

I would like to once again extend my gratitude to our partners and nonprofit customers. Many of you worked side by side with us to make sure that what we build today and in the future meets the needs of nonprofits and grantmakers globally. 

When we first made our announcement in March, I outlined what is changing and what we remain deeply committed to. Please take a moment to read that as it provides important context as to why we are bringing new grantmaking innovations to the sector. 

As a quick reminder, historically we have built products beside the rest of Salesforce. We have delivered amazing products like Grants Management, NPSP, Case Management. With the new Nonprofit Cloud, rather than layering nonprofit and grantmaking applications on top of the platform, we have the opportunity, like many other industries Salesforce serves, to build more directly into the core of Salesforce. This allows us to create standards and synergies across all Salesforce industries. It means when we make decisions about how to implement a feature we start from a rich catalog of common components, available from other industries, that we can repurpose and extend. I share an example of what this means in my post from March. 

So what does this mean for our Grantmaking community (nonprofits and foundations)?

We have the opportunity to build grantmaking functionality into the core Salesforce platform. Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking will be new functionality that is separate from the existing managed packages Grants Management and foundationConnect. 

This means grantmakers have faster and easier access to the full Salesforce platform and the billions of dollars in research and development across Clouds. It also means greater cross-sector impact byworking hand in hand with other industries. And driving impact as every component is built with outcomes in mind without heavy customization and in a more standardized way.

In building the new Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking capabilities, we are not only realizing the aforementioned platform benefits, we’ve actually also been able to take a step back and update the entire system, in ways that make it more responsive. Updates to award management and budget data collection are two examples of data model changes, but we’ve also been able to add powerful application improvements, such as an advanced form building engine (powered by OmniStudio), and built-in document generation.    

I understand that for customers using our current offerings, this may feel disruptive. We know that some of you are probably wondering, “Can I migrate?” “How will that work?” and the answer is yes, we are working on tools and guidelines to help you make that journey, when the time is right, and we are collaborating across our entire partner ecosystem to ensure that there are a rich set of resources available for existing customers who want to start trailblazing early.  Please stay tuned for more details, we have an ambitious roadmap, and as we complete items we will add them into a steady stream of information coming to you through the community.

Thanks for all the great work you do, and your continued support as we evolve to find better ways to support you.

If you have any questions, please comment on this post and I and our team will do our best to answer your questions. And rest assured, there will also be far more information rolling out in the months to come.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other posts or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. For more information please visit www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-667-6389.