Soapbox Engage Blog

It might be the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere, but you wouldn't think it was vacation time in Salesforce world. As the Salesforce Summer 17 release rolls out this week, admins everywhere are digging into the newest features while wiggling toes into the sand.

Summer here in DC means more softball, humidity, and likely a pretty unforgettable week of politics. So while the world feels like it's gearing up for an endless news cycle, I'm going to pry myself away from the TV and cozy up to 500 pages of release notes. In spite of what we see on the TV these days of a divided world, the Power of Us Hub continues to be a the prime example of how we're better when we collaborate to solve tough challenges.

So turn off your TV news channel of choice, take a deep breath, and let's dive into some community goodness.

Don't forget, you can have the goodness of the PUB Crawl delivered into your inbox each Monday morning by subscribing today!

Repeat donors are essential to successful fundraising efforts. They can also be notoriously difficult to come by, and are becoming more so. Between 2008 and 2015, donor retention across the nonprofit sector declined 8%. Overall, just 45% of donors come back and give again to an organization in the year after a gift. That number becomes even starker when looking at just first time donors who give again only 23% of the time.

What’s more, post-election realities have affected giving in ways that require nonprofits to innovate in their fundraising efforts. Lynne Wester, famed donor relations expert noted in her blog recently:

“With a finite amount of charitable giving and an ever increasing number of nonprofits, the dollars simply cannot stretch equitably to everyone. Meaning that if one nonprofit experiences a windfall, like the ACLU raising $24 million dollars in one weekend, six times its yearly totals, that this money comes from another nonprofit's bottom line.”

To compete, you must set yourself apart in a sea of nonprofits. One powerful way of doing so is by expressing exceptional gratitude.

Last week at the Salesforce.org Partner Summit in California, I decided to go a bit off-script with my ignite presentation. On the way to the event, I passed by my old high school in Los Gatos, and thought about my early days of eagerness to share ideas and bring people together. In this case, the high school newspaper.

It sparked a little fire that reminded me of my path to the non-profit tech world, starting with journalism, weaving through a war zone in the Balkans on a WFP plane, and ending up in an open source world that embraced knowledge sharing and empowering those that needed it the most.

There's an incredible number of opportunities for us to give our talents in the open source NPSP and HEDA communities. While many of us in the Salesforce ecosystem recognize today as a day of memorial, think about what you're most passionate about. Then, consider sharing this passion with those working alongside you in our community.

To keep those ideas flowing, here's a healthy pour of knowledge from the PUB!

Don't forget, you can have the goodness of the PUB Crawl delivered into your inbox each Monday morning by subscribing today!

At this point, my body has completely given up on trying to know what timezone it's in. Ten days ago, the community gathered in Seattle for the first NPSP in the Emerald City. Last week, NPSP Days hit the shores of Europe! I started the week at the NPSP Day in Amsterdam where I met with talented Salesforce friends from the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Belgium, and the US. Filled with Salesforce knowledge and stroopwafels (which I'm declaring the current official cookie of NPSP Days), I hopped across the channel to London for the Salesforce World Tour and NPSP Day in London.

My concluding thoughts after these events: the NPSP is alive and well in Europe!

As my journey on the other side of the pond has come to a close (for now), I'm turning up my favorite Frank Sinatra songs for the next NPSP Day, and diving into this week’s round up of Salesforce non-profit goodness. Grab a full English pint and join me, woudl ya?

Don't forget, you can have the goodness of the PUB Crawl delivered into your inbox each Monday morning by subscribing today!

A few years ago I attended a fundraising conference and had the chance to hear Stephen Pidgeon of the direct marketing agency Tangible Response speak and my life was changed forever when it came to writing appeals.

We recently shared a how-to recipe for creating a Next Ask Amount formula field on the Contact record in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack. Next, we tossed in twelve different versions of that formula to give you options. Now we take this same concept and extend the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack by creating a Next Recurring Ask Amount field to convert one-time donors into sustaining supporters.

For a deeper dive into strategy, Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack tactics, and details on operationalizing your personalized ask using Pardot or the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, watch our recorded webinar, Making the Right Fundraising Ask: When, How and How Much.

In our latest blog post, we offered step-by-step instructions for creating a Next Ask Amount formula field in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack to be used in personalizing fundraising appeals. Being big fans of choice, we're happy to offer twelve different versions of that formula from which you can choose when creating your own field.

Escaping one Washington for another was exactly what the doctor ordered. Last week's NPSP Day Seattle overflowed with NPSP knowledge, and the local coffee kept the energy moving as we worked through more than 12 different breakout sessions during the largest NPSP Day ever!

Tomorrow, NPSP Day moves from one of the most established NPSP communities to one of the newest: Amsterdam! The city of canals, bikes, and stroopwafels plays host to the first NPSP Day in Europe, and kicks off a double-hit week of NPSP Days. Friday, it's off to NPSP Day London!

As I keep gathering all the community feedback I can collect, let's take a moment to reflect on the great content already found right in the Power of Us Hub! Sit back, relax, and enjoy this week's roundup of non-profit Salesforce news.

Don't forget, you can have the goodness of the PUB Crawl delivered into your inbox each Monday morning by subscribing today!

In our previous post, we lauded the importance of personalizing the ask amount when sending fundraising appeals. In this how to recipe, we give step-by-step instructions for doing so in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack by creating a Next Ask Amount field on the Contact object.

For a deeper dive into strategy, different methods for calculating the Next Ask Amount, and details on operationalizing your personalized ask using Pardot or the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, watch our recorded webinar, Making the Right Fundraising Ask: When, How and How Much.

So, here's the deal, folks. During the next two weeks, we're going to witness some pretty epic Salesforce community gatherings. Seattle, Amsterdam, and London will be rocking at NPSP Days and Salesforce World Tours, and like the appropriate groupie, I'll be front stage yelling "do Free Bird!". Or facilitating with a captain's hat. Either way, it's going to be fun.

While I book more miles than appropriate for any sane person, grab multiple steins of Salesforce knowledge and saddle up to the PUB Crawl.

Don't forget, you can have the goodness of the PUB Crawl delivered into your inbox each Monday morning by subscribing today!

As we incredibly turn the calendar over to a new month, May comes roaring in with a ton of event announcements and lots of great activity in the Power of Us Hub. Not only that, but this PUB Crawl reporter is gearing up to log some serious miles in an NPSP Day tour crossing a couple of continents. Don't worry, your weekly dose of Salesforce knowledge will keep arriving right on time.

Pull up a barstool, and I'll fill up your glass with Salesforce knowledge. Let's dive right in to it!

Don't forget, you can have the goodness of the PUB Crawl delivered into your inbox each Monday morning by subscribing today!

You did it. You crafted a compelling appeal with a great story that is sure to inspire action from your recipients. But you are no novice. You know that the wrong ask amount can cause even a great appeal to fall flat and donation response rates to plummet. Situations where major donors are asked for a mere $25 are the stuff of nightmares. And asking for too much from a given donor can inspire eye rolls and opt outs faster than you can click a mouse.

In this day and age, you need to personalize even this part of the fundraising process. But how?

In our earlier post, we showed love to Lifetime Value as a tool for guiding fundraising success for your organization. We then shared a step-by-step recipe for extending the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack to calculate historical giving data for Contacts up to five years back as well as calculating a Contact's consecutive years of giving. In this how to recipe, we'll walk you through the final steps in calculating Gross Lifetime Value for your organization.

For a full overview of all steps in this series as well as a presentation of the strategy behind them, watch our 45-minute recorded webinar, Boost Donations with Data-Driven Fundraising: Lifetime Value and the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack.

In our previous post, we sang the praises of Lifetime Value as a powerful metric that can guide fundraising success for your organization. As we noted, to calculate Lifetime Value, you'll need to know your average donor lifespan, ideally for up to five years back. If you happen to be using the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack, you're well on your way to getting that number. In this how to recipe, we'll walk you through a few steps that surface this on the Contact record for easy calculation.

For a full overview of all steps in this series as well as a presentation of the strategy behind them, watch our power-packed 45-minute recorded webinar, Boost Donations with Data-Driven Fundraising: Lifetime Value and the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack.

A consistent string of beautiful spring days in DC. An evening celebrating progress towards equality. It's been a pretty good past week in the Salesforce non-profit world in Washington! Before I wrap up my wire story for tomorrow's newspaper, here's an evening edition of the PUB Crawl!

Don't forget, you can have the goodness of the PUB Crawl delivered into your inbox each Monday morning by subscribing today!

Return on Investment, Acquisition Rate, Conversion Rate, oh my! These and so many more fundraising statistics are helpful in their own way, dear nonprofit fundraiser, but so many can tempt one into simple snapshots of the past, leading to short-sightedness in the future. How can one avoid the temptation of the myopic and rejoice in clear-eyed, future-focused fundraising success?

Lifetime Value. (Cue angel choir).

Lifetime Value (LTV) transforms all of the donations you receive and the money spent acquiring them into a single, powerful number. That number can predict the future and, more importantly, grant the foresight to inform strategy so you can change that future, and raise more money at less cost to do more good.

But how does Lifetime Value help inform, and how do you find that powerful number for your own organization?

In our series of Salesforce how tos for increasing monthly gifts, we've detailed tactics you can implement within the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) to convert one-time donors to sustaining supporters. We presented recurring donation information directly on the Contact record using User Defined Rollups. We then used those new fields to create Levels that track recurring donor status and drive effective engagement strategy. And, most recently, we created User Defined Rollups and Levels that explicitly target one-time donors giving in the last 90 days as potential recurring donors. Today, we'll finalize the process by creating an Engagement Plan Template to be used for cultivating donors.

For a full overview of all steps in this series as well as a presentation of the strategy behind them, check out our recorded webinar Convert One-Time Donors to Sustaining Supporters: Strategy, Tactics, and the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack.

With the fantastic NPSP Sprint in Baltimore, and the Nonprofit Technology Conference in DC, It’s been a crazy past week. There's nothing better than sharing ideas and knowledge with members of our open source community, hitting the streets for 7am runs, staying awake into the late hours talking governor limits (all of that actually happened).

With more than 100 penguins now adopted in new homes, I'm able to refocus my energies back to the taps of knowledge here at the PUB Crawl. Grab a barstool and join me for a round of Salesforce news!

Don't forget, you can have the goodness of the PUB Crawl delivered into your inbox each Monday morning by subscribing today!

In recent posts, we've detailed step-by-step recipes anyone can use to turn their Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) instance into a monthly donor assembly plant. We've discussed using User Defined Rollups to display recurring donor data on the Contact. We provided details on how to create Levels that track recurring donor status and drive effective engagement strategy. Today, we'll bring both User Defined Rollups and Levels together to allow you to specifically cultivate recent one-time donors into recurring donors.

For a full overview of all steps in this series as well as a presentation of the strategy behind them, check out our recorded webinar Convert One-Time Donors to Sustaining Supporters: Strategy, Tactics, and the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack.

Between calisthenics in preparation for tomorrow's NPSP Community Sprint and the Nonprofit Technology Conference next week (look for our penguins and say hi!), I may have glanced at the gym's TV tuned to CNN. It looks like there's likely to be some strong headwinds coming towards many of our community's US-based organizations that receive federal funding. Ah, the joy of politics.

It's time to tighten those running shoelaces, amigos.

As gears in the nonprofit machine, we all need to bring our A-game, especially as we venture into uncertain times. So keep up the stretching routine, and substitute that workout drink with a glass of knowledge from the PUB Crawl to keep sharp. Let's dive in!

Don't forget, you can have the goodness of the PUB Crawl delivered into your inbox each Monday morning by subscribing today!