Top Nonprofit Cloud Tools That Drive Data-Backed Decisions
Nonprofit Cloud offers an enormous breadth and depth of specialized tools for nonprofits and grantmaking organizations. Built on Salesforce core, It leverages the power of Salesforce CRM to help nonprofits effectively manage and analyze data.
As Fíonta explains, Nonprofit Cloud is ideal for measuring your impact, tracking program progress, and generating reports and visuals communicating your success to key stakeholders. Its tools allow nonprofits to forecast trends and campaign performance, providing the insights needed to make data-driven decisions.
We’ll explore some of the top ways Nonprofit Cloud helps nonprofits track and analyze data effectively. Let’s begin.
Benefits of Using Nonprofit Cloud Tools
Double the Donation’s guide to data collection highlights some of the key benefits of leveraging donor and campaign data, such as:
- Providing an accurate impact measurement
- Helping organizations effectively allocate resources
- Promoting informed decision-making rather than guessing
Nonprofit Cloud empowers your organization to reap these benefits by managing each core part of your operations, including fundraising, program management, and case management.
Top Nonprofit Cloud Tools
The following tools and features are designed to help nonprofits easily and accurately track data, keep data clean and organized, and quickly gain useful insights that inspire wise decisions.
Fundraising Tools
The Nonprofit Cloud for Fundraising module unites fundraising teams on a single platform, offering purpose-built tools your team can use to strengthen donor relationships, improve efficiency, analyze data, and more. The module includes apps tailored to different roles, including fundraising strategy, donor engagement, philanthropy and partnerships, and general fundraising operations.
When it comes to fundraising data, these tools simplify and enhance tracking and analysis:
- Flexible gift entry: Nonprofit Cloud offers your organization the flexibility to accurately track various types of donations. Enter standard one-time gifts made by individuals or set up recurring gift tracking. Your team can also create a batch to enter a large number of gifts at once, saving time and reducing the chance of human error.
- Source codes: Source codes are unique codes included in specific links. The source code is activated when a supporter or participant clicks one of these links. Your team can then track campaign performance, understand donors’ communication preferences, calculate ROI, and personalize future communications. As a part of the Salesforce Summer ‘24 release, you can manage outreach source codes using the campaign flow in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition.
- Custom donor scores: Build custom scores for your donors based on recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) values. These scores provide a cumulative, at-a-glance RFM score for each donor. Donor scores can be viewed on the donor’s profile along with demographic data and other key insights to quickly gauge the supporter’s affinity and responsiveness to a certain cause or campaign.
These flexible tools ensure that your data reflects your nonprofit’s unique needs and practices, enhancing your data’s accuracy and clarity.
Program Management Tools
Nonprofit Cloud for Programs helps nonprofits plan, deliver, and track their programs. This module improves participant experiences, streamlines staff workflows, and yields the insights needed to improve offerings.
Some of the tools that offer these insights are:
- Participant profiles: If your nonprofit works with individuals, you likely set goals for participants, assign them to programs, disburse benefits, and manage tasks related to that individual. These details and notes from your sessions are stored within a single participant profile. This gives anyone working with the participant a detailed overview of their history with your nonprofit, goals, and progress so your staff can make the best choices for that individual.
- Program Management Home Page: This out-of-the-box home page is another product of the recent Summer ‘24 release. It is designed to give your team a comprehensive overview of your nonprofit’s program delivery and allow staff to monitor the status of your programs closely. From this single page, you can quickly assess whether programs are on track to meet organizational goals, get a simple overview of your programs and benefits, and track new referrals.
- Cohort objects and fields: Group your program participants together using the new Program Cohort object. Then, move those participants through the program together and easily compare cohorts or measure an individual’s progress against their cohort. Nonprofit programs can vary widely and have unique needs, and this method of data collection helps your staff account for those needs and idiosyncrasies.
Managing programs is demanding and has many moving parts. Nonprofit Cloud’s unified platform provides comprehensive overviews of your programs’ health, promoting informed decision-making that drives long-term success.
Case Management Tools
Nonprofit Cloud for Case Management is housed within the Program Management module and emphasizes providing better participant outcomes. This solution remedies heavy case manager workloads, disjointed systems, and barriers to transparent communication and collaboration across your teams.
Additionally, Nonprofit Cloud’s case management tools offer the following features for enhanced data collection and management:
- Easy, streamlined note-taking: Allow staff to quickly capture detailed notes from sessions with participants. Populate notes with additional information like attendance records, timestamps, and supporting documents for the most comprehensive records possible. These notes can be shared with other case managers, making participant transition simple and keeping data consolidated.
- Dynamic assessments: Use these assessments during intake to ensure staff ask new participants the most relevant questions. Additionally, staff can easily add necessary documents to the assessment and allow participants to navigate the process at their own pace. This ensures the participant’s intake is efficient and pleasant and organizes all necessary information in a single location.
- Adaptable data tracking: Your staff will use the Case object to plan care for the participant. Cases can span across multiple programs, and staff can loop in multiple individuals, such as caretakers or other team members at your organization. This flexible tool can conform to any program structure, making it easy to record and report your progress.
Accurate data collection is critical for case management. It influences quality of care, resource allocation, and long-term planning for your programs. In the context of fields like healthcare, your data collection methods must be secure and ethical to comply with regulations.
Other Salesforce Tools and Features
Remember to stay cognizant of and try out other options within Salesforce. With Nonprofit Cloud, your organization can access common features for Industries, apps from the AppExchange, and tools belonging to other Industry Clouds. These solutions can extend Nonprofit Cloud’s capabilities to assist with data hygiene, security, and efficiency.
Consider looking beyond Salesforce for additional assistance for larger organizations or those with very complex needs. Working with a Salesforce tech consultant can help you implement the solution, clean up and migrate data, and maximize your investment in this powerful CRM. If needed, research other services that can enhance your data quality to drive more accurate insights, like appending missing information or enriching your first-party data with third-party, market-level insights.
Collecting, managing, and cleaning your nonprofit’s data is key. After all, if your database is flawed or biased, the insights you glean from it will be, too. Nonprofit Cloud offers powerful, flexible tools that revolutionize how your nonprofit records and analyzes data about your donors, campaigns, and programs.
