Most nonprofits starting on Salesforce today should build on Nonprofit Cloud. It brings donors, gifts, programs, outcomes and volunteers onto one record for each person. Organizations already running the Nonprofit Success Pack can stay put while it serves them. Success depends less on the product than on three choices: how people and households are modeled, which outside tools connect, and who keeps the org healthy afterward.
Should a nonprofit start on Nonprofit Cloud or the Nonprofit Success Pack?
For a new build, start on Nonprofit Cloud. For an existing NPSP org, the question is timing, not whether NPSP still works.
NPSP is the older managed package that bends Sales Cloud objects into a fundraising tool. Nonprofit Cloud, by contrast, ships as part of the core platform. Salesforce briefly branded it Agentforce Nonprofit from December 2025 and has since returned to the Nonprofit Cloud name. Both names appear across salesforce.com, so expect to see both in proposals and documentation.
Salesforce's help documentation lists four parts: Fundraising, Program and Case Management, Outcome Management, and Grantmaking as an optional add-on. Volunteer Management is documented as a further feature area. Purpose-built AI agents, such as prospect research and participant management, sit on top. If you already run NPSP, our separate guide on moving from NPSP to Nonprofit Cloud covers the data model changes and timing; this article does not repeat it.
What does Power of Us give an eligible organization?
Power of Us is the Salesforce program that grants donated licenses to qualifying nonprofits. At the time of writing, salesforce.com describes ten free licenses of either Nonprofit Cloud or Sales and Service Cloud, plus discounted pricing on additional subscriptions.
Eligibility is checked through an application in the Power of Us portal, and Salesforce publishes guidelines on who qualifies. Read the current terms yourself before you budget, because program details change. Three points are easy to miss:
- Donated licenses cover the subscription, not the setup, data migration or ongoing administration.
- Add-ons such as Grantmaking, Marketing Cloud or extra storage are priced separately; ask your Salesforce account team what applies to you.
- Ten seats go quickly once program staff, finance and volunteer coordinators all need access, so plan license types by role from the start.
How should donors, households and other constituents be recorded?
Nonprofit Cloud represents each individual as a person account, and groups people into households through a relationship group. That single record is the main reason to choose it.
A board member may also give monthly, volunteer at events and refer a family to a program. On one person account, each of those relationships is visible to the right staff without separate spreadsheets. Organizations and foundations remain business accounts, linked to the people who work there or sit on their boards.
Settle three rules before any data moves. Decide what counts as a duplicate person and who may merge records. Decide how household names, salutations and mailing addresses are generated. Decide which program participants should be invisible to fundraising staff, because client confidentiality usually outranks a complete donor view.
How does fundraising work on the gift commitment model?
Nonprofit Cloud separates the promise of money, the money received, and the purpose it funds. That split makes recurring gifts, pledges and restricted funds easier to reconcile.
A one-off donation becomes a gift transaction. A monthly sustainer or multi-year pledge becomes a gift commitment with a schedule, fulfilled by transactions as payments arrive. Designations record which fund or program each gift supports. Campaigns sit across all of it, so an appeal, a gala and a giving day can each report their own results.
Major gifts need a different view. Gift officers work a pipeline of prospects through cultivation and solicitation, which Salesforce models with opportunities linked to the commitment they help secure. Keep that pipeline short and honest: a stage list gift officers actually update beats a detailed one they ignore. Record moves and contact reports as activities so the next officer inherits the relationship history.
Where do grants fit when you are the one applying for them?
Most nonprofits seek grants rather than award them. Salesforce's Grantmaking add-on is documented for outbound grants, so a grant-seeking team needs its own design.
Funders are organization accounts. Each application can be tracked as a pipeline record with deadlines, requested amount and status. Once awarded, the money is recorded through the fundraising model, with designations for any restrictions. Reporting deadlines, deliverables and budget periods deserve their own tracked tasks or records, owned by a named person. Confirm with your Salesforce account team or implementation partner which standard objects suit your grant process before building custom ones.
Foundations, community funds and intermediaries that do award grants should evaluate Grantmaking directly. It includes an Experience Cloud site template for applicants, according to Salesforce's documentation.
Can program staff track services and outcomes in the same org?
Yes. Program and Case Management covers enrollment, service delivery, care plans, referrals and assessments, and Outcome Management records what changed for participants.
Design data entry for the caseworker first. If staff record a service in two clicks during their working day, funder reports follow from reliable data. If the screens exist only to satisfy a report, entries arrive late and incomplete. Agree on a small set of outcome indicators per program, define each one in writing, and resist adding indicators every grant cycle.
Sensitive client data raises the stakes. Health, housing, immigration or justice information calls for tight sharing rules, field-level security and a clear retention policy. Involve whoever owns privacy and compliance before the first program goes live.
Does volunteer management need a separate tool?
Often not. Nonprofit Cloud includes volunteer features for shifts and initiatives, so many organizations can keep volunteers on the same person record as donors and participants.
A dedicated volunteer platform can still make sense when background checks, complex credentialing or large public sign-up events drive the work. Whichever route you pick, make sure volunteer hours reach the person account. Volunteers who give time frequently become donors, and development staff should see that history.
How should donor email and consent be handled?
Store consent in Salesforce, send through a marketing tool that reads it, and never let a list export become the source of truth.
Marketing Cloud and Account Engagement are separate Salesforce products with their own licensing. Each can drive appeals, welcome series and event invitations from constituent data. Smaller teams sometimes start with a simpler email tool connected to Salesforce. Whichever you use, record channel preferences and opt-outs on each person's record, and respect anonymity requests. Keep program participants out of donor appeals unless they have agreed to receive them.
Which outside systems usually connect, and what should each own?
Connect only what removes real manual work, and decide for each system which side holds the master record. The table groups common integration categories rather than recommending vendors.
| Category | Usually owns | Salesforce holds | Check before choosing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online donation forms and payment processors | Card details, payment tokens, settlement | Gift transactions, commitments, processor reference IDs | Whether the connector writes to Nonprofit Cloud gift objects, not only NPSP opportunities |
| Accounting system | General ledger, audited financials, restricted net assets | Gift detail by designation and campaign | How gift batches reconcile to deposits each month |
| Peer-to-peer and event fundraising | Participant pages, team totals, ticketing | Fundraiser and donor records, attributed gifts | How a gift to a participant credits both donor and fundraiser |
| Email and marketing | Send history, engagement data | Consent, preferences, segment membership | Which side wins when an opt-out is recorded twice |
| Volunteer or background-check services | Screening results, sign-up pages | Volunteer status, hours, roles | What screening detail staff may legally store |
Payment data deserves extra care. Card numbers should stay with the processor, and Salesforce should hold only references. Nonprofit Cloud also documents an Accounting Subledger feature; ask your account team whether it fits your finance process before building a custom export.
What will the board and funders expect to see?
Boards want a few trusted numbers each quarter; funders want evidence tied to each award. Build both from the same records instead of compiling them by hand.
- For the board: giving by fund and fiscal year against budget, donor retention, recurring revenue trend, major gift pipeline by stage, and volunteer hours.
- For grant compliance: spending and outputs per award, outcome indicators per program, and upcoming reporting deadlines with an owner.
- For managers: lapsed donors to call, overdue acknowledgments, and caseloads by staff member.
Have finance sign off on the definition of each money metric. A retention figure that does not match the audited books loses board confidence quickly.
Who will look after the org once it is live?
Plan for a small team. Many nonprofits have one part-time administrator, or a staff member who inherited the job alongside another role.
That reality should shape the build. Favor standard objects and declarative automation over custom code, document every flow, and keep the number of integrations modest. When the administrator leaves, the next person should be able to follow what was built. Some organizations pair an internal owner with a managed services partner. The partner handles releases, fixes and user requests, leaving the owner free to focus on staff and data quality.
Which shortcuts tend to cost nonprofits later?
- Copying a decade of unclean donor data into a new org and planning to tidy it afterward.
- Choosing a donation form or payment connector before confirming it supports the Nonprofit Cloud data model.
- Building fundraising, programs and volunteers all at once with no internal owner for any of them.
- Customizing heavily because a feature 'works differently' from the old database, instead of adjusting the process.
- Leaving consent as an afterthought, then discovering program participants received fundraising appeals.
- Treating donated licenses as a free project and leaving no budget for training or support.
What is a sensible first release?
Start with the work that touches money and constituents daily, prove the data is trusted, then add programs and volunteers in later releases.
- Person accounts, households and organization records, with duplicate rules agreed and historical data cleaned.
- Gift transactions, recurring commitments and designations, connected to your payment processor and reconciled with finance.
- Acknowledgment process and the consent fields every later tool will rely on.
- A board dashboard and a monthly finance reconciliation report.
- Role-based training for gift processors and development staff, using your own donor records.
Program and case management usually comes next, starting with one program whose staff are willing to shape the screens. Volunteers, grant tracking, marketing automation and AI agents follow once the core records are reliable.
