Resources from the AMER Ask Me Anything Session from the 17th January 2024
Here are some of the resources shared as part of the AMER Ask Me Anything Session
THANK YOU @Melissa Hill Dees @Hayley Tuller and @Rob OBrien for answering great questions and hosting a thoughtful conversation. Here are the follow-up resources, as promised!
As a newbie in the ecosystem, what to keep in mind? Things to be aware of?
- Find a user group and connect with others near you!
- At Navigators they have a ‘trauma list’ where they keep a list of what went wrong or things to avoid
- Use your sandboxes!
- Tip from Michael in the chat: Custom Custom fiscal years. (Not just changing the day the fiscal year starts. That’s fine. But if you actually enable CUSTOM fiscal years—as in having a year that isn’t a year long or things like that—you will never be able to turn it off and it will break just about everything about reporting and filtering based on fiscal year.
- Work with the end in mind
- Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) vs Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) - make sure you know the difference
- Check out Melissa’s book for her tips!
- Think about data governance
- Also, access to a free class that Kathy Waterworth and Melissa did
- Not everyone needs sys admin perms!
Do you frown on multi-contact households?
- No! Ok here :)
Looking to create a donor / member profile - just getting started with this process - any recommendations about how best to go about this? Would like to list out giving histories, membership history, engagement, activities - all relevant touch points. Using NPSP.
- Think about requirements! maybe sit next to the users, as you look at the contact, what do you not care about and what do you wish you could see? Then build from there.
- Get rid of tabs they don’t care about, customise homepages
- Step 1: Don’t settle for the default Lightning Record page templates or layouts. Michael doing a talk at TDX on this!
- Think about: do they want detail or high level overview
Recommendations or strategies for orgs - how to sustainably continue to enhance, and implement new features, allows them to be innovative without creating tech debt
- Go with the lowest level of complexity —> native salesforce then app exchange then custom builds
- Overall - people aren’t leveraging ISV apps the way they should
- Check out: Using SABWA to Drive Salesforce Adoption
- Look at the apps that are out there - ISVs already work to address the pain points
- It's not how to avoid tech debt its what your plan to handle it and have a process in place
- Managed services
- The NYC User group has meetings on these topics coming soon
Is there a date for Nonprofit Dreamin' this year yet?
- No date set yet. Look for a survey soon! We are constantly evolving and improving.
My organization worked with an implementation partner to migrate our Blackbaud data to Salesforce NPSP. In addition to several other issues, they created temporary Blackbaud legacy fields that we noticed were not talking to SF. We have now ended that contract and have decided to find a template that will allow us to format our Blackbaud data on the backend and import our legacy data that way. Do you know where I can find a template like this?? On NPSP
- NPSP Data Import Templates Overview
- Apsona is a great option!
- NPSP Data Import on Trailhead
Final thoughts:
- Join the upcoming Virtual Sprint on Feb 6-7! And join @Salesforce Commons & Sprint Events to stay in the loop, great opportunity to connect with other Nonprofits!
- Join a local user group near you! https://trailblazercommunitygroups.com
- Join another Nonprofit AMA session, these are monthly! See next month:
- 21st February, 10:15 am CT - hosts @Judi Sohn @David Cheng @Rob OBrien
- 21st February, 10 am UK - hosts @Emma Keeling @Chris Harris @Carolina Marta Santamaría Lucena
Thanks again to our hosts and everyone who attended! Hope to see you all again at a future session, see links in the group sidebar or above^ woo!
