This week, Salesforce announced its new “Nonprofit Cloud” products, some of which will be available to customers this week. This new bundled suite of Salesforce products marks an architectural and price-point departure from open-source mainstays like the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) and Program Management Module (PMM).
Here are the key takeaways for existing Salesforce customers (new potential customers face different decision points):
- You are still in a good position to continue using your current architecture and products without any change.
- Salesforce continues its generous Power of Us license donation program, which provides 10 free licenses to qualified 501(c)3 nonprofits. The program is being expanded to include the new Nonprofit Cloud in the free 10 licenses.
- Salesforce reiterates its commitment to maintaining and keeping the Nonprofit Success Pack and the Program Management Module available. Given the large user base for the existing products, we hope and expect that commitment is indeed a long-term one. This ongoing and long-term support is critical to the operation of tens of thousands of nonprofits that have invested heavily in Salesforce over the years. We expect new features or enhancements to these products to be limited going forward.
- The three times-per-year Salesforce releases will continue to enhance the platform for existing nonprofit customers. If we look back over the past several years, features like dynamic forms and automation enhancements via Flow represent some of the biggest improvements to the user experience.
Things to know about the new Nonprofit Cloud
- The license cost for the bundled new Nonprofit Cloud products is significantly higher than licenses required for existing products that can use Sales Cloud or Platform licenses. After the first 10 free licenses, the price for the new Nonprofit Cloud is $60/user/month ($720/user/year).
- The Nonprofit Cloud products will be available in stages over the next year. This week marks the initial release of the program and case management products. The products focused on fundraising and outcomes are slated to be released later this year. As these other products are released, they will only be sold as part of a single bundle of products. There is currently no plan from Salesforce to offer these products à la carte. Salesforce really needs to offer lower-priced individual products to allow nonprofits to unlock the value of this new offering.
- Moving to the Nonprofit Cloud will require a full data migration to a new Salesforce instance, as well as rebuilding any customizations from your current system. The new products have some architectural similarities to today’s products—which will help—but are different enough that migration will still be a significant effort.
- One benefit of the Nonprofit Cloud is a single unified platform with access to program and case management, fundraising, and outcomes functionality all under one license. The Nonprofit Cloud will also include advanced features such as Omnistudio and Data Processing Engine (DPE). While this package may be attractive for new customers with ambitious intentions for Salesforce, we believe the increased cost and significant migration effort will not be worth it for many of our clients.
If you’re evaluating how this announcement may impact your organization, contact us to set up a free consultation.