From galas to 5ks to auctions, events are a key part of your nonprofit’s fundraising strategy, and your team needs the right software to pull off these complicated activities. Because event planning, guest registration, and event hosting require unique software solutions, many nonprofits can benefit from using a unified management platform like Salesforce.
Today, Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) is the most comprehensive Salesforce product for nonprofits. With NPC, nonprofits can manage every aspect of their event from one unified platform, creating a cohesive and organized experience for staff, volunteers, and attendees.
To help your nonprofit determine if NPC is the right tool for your organization, we’ll review its top benefits and explore how it can combat common event challenges.
Key Benefits of Using NPC to Manage Events
NPC is Salesforce’s premium product for nonprofits, and Fíonta’s guide to NPC explains a few benefits it has over its predecessor, Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP):
- NPC allows greater and easier access to other Salesforce Cloud solutions
- NPC is currently receiving active developer support from Salesforce
- NPC has greater flexibility and customization options than NPSP
Nonprofits can still use and buy licenses for NPSP, and 501(c)(3)s are also eligible for 10 free licenses. However, they should be aware the platform will no longer receive updates.
When compared to other CRMs or using several separate event management tools, NPC has a few advantages:
- Unified data management. From ticket sales to on-site donations, events tend to generate a lot of data. With disparate tools, this information can get siloed in your event hosting platform, ticket registration system, and text-to-give tool, hampering your efforts to truly understand how any one guest engaged with your nonprofit at your event. With NPC, all data is collected by one system and stored in your CRM.
- Robust analytics. View your data at a glance with NPC’s dashboard, enabling you to quickly assess your fundraising event’s status. You can also get a deep dive into your data by generating various reports, helping you plan future events.
- Flexibility. Customization and flexibility are some of Salesforce products’ greatest strengths. Along with working alongside other Salesforce Clouds, NPC also has a host of other integrations with third-party and Salesforce native apps. This means you can adapt your software stack as needed to account for each event’s unique needs. For instance, if you’re hosting a physical event that requires waivers, like a golf tournament, you can integrate a specialized waiver tool into your NPC platform.
- Personalized communications. Along with storing all data in one system, you can easily pull information already housed in your CRM for your event promotion. For instance, you might send out personalized invitations or pull prospect research data to identify which donors your major gift officers should seek out at your event for relationship building.
With these benefits, NPC allows nonprofits to host organized, streamlined events where all information is easy to access.
Common Nonprofit Event Challenges & How NPC Helps
Impersonal, poor attendee experiences.
Events succeed because of the planned activities and how easy they are to access. In other words, your event needs to have user-friendly registration forms, payment processing integrations, and an attendee portal.
With NPC, your nonprofit can use Salesforce Experience Cloud to develop a streamlined online experience for guests. Leverage Experience Cloud’s templates and drag-and-drop editor to design an attendee portal where guests can find all of your event information, connect with other supporters, and get their questions answered.
Additionally, you can provide guests with instant help and communication through Agentforce. Agentforce is Salesforce’s new AI assistant, compatible with NPC. As the name suggests, Agentforce is designed to be an autonomous AI agent that provides your organization with support 24/7.
Agentforce can accomplish many tasks for your nonprofit, particularly support communication. For instance, it can send personalized messages, such as event registration confirmation notifications. A supporter might ask a question, like “Where is my donation/event registration fee going?” and Agentforce would be able to provide a coherent answer. Or, if you’re writing a donor email series, you might ask Agentforce to create tailored donor briefs based on supporters’ interests.
Plus, it can be set up to answer questions about your event and direct guests to relevant information pages, reducing staff time spent on communication and providing guests with immediate answers.
Difficulty collaborating across teams.
Fundraising events require collaboration from several teams at your nonprofit, particularly your fundraising and marketing departments. With the right technology, these groups can coordinate, delegate, and stay updated on each other’s progress throughout the planning process.
For example, let’s say you will host a gala and need to plan various games and activities to entertain guests. With NPC, your nonprofit can:
- Create a project management plan with members of your fundraising, marketing, major giving, and event planning teams looped in.
- Share information and ideas, allowing event planners to confirm their chosen activities with the marketing team.
- Work collaboratively, enabling your marketing and fundraising teams to collaborate on promotional content that drives registrations.
- Communicate with donors so major gift officers can craft personalized invitations to major donors using information they receive directly from the marketing and event planning teams.
When everyone uses the same platform, all project updates are recorded and accessible to the rest of your team. This allows for instant communication, prevents miscommunication, and keeps your projects running smoothly.
Lack of accurate performance data.
If you are using multiple disparate tools rather than a unified platform like NPC, your data is likely scattered and may be difficult to interpret.
Double the Donation’s guide to nonprofit data collection recommends using a platform that enables you to integrate your software, like NPC, stating: “Integrated software ensures that nonprofit data is consistent and accurate, which minimizes errors that occur when manually transferring information between systems. Plus, it enables real-time data updates, giving all team members access to the latest information to make decisions.”
NPC takes data collection a step further, enabling nonprofits to develop outreach source codes for each communication channel. This can revolutionize your ability to collect and analyze marketing data by accurately tracking which channels are driving the most traffic to your event registration page.
Additionally, NPC’s various reporting and analytics tools enable you to break down granular event data so you can take a deep dive into specific aspects of your events. For instance, you might analyze the number of donations you received because of the event and what activities guests participated in that may have led them to donate.
Events are major fundraisers for your nonprofit, and you should have the best technology possible to back your efforts. Assess your technology stack to decide if Salesforce is the right platform for you, and start planning your move to NPC.
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