Soapbox Engage Blog

As hard as it is to believe, #GivingTuesday is fewer than five months away. Smart nonprofits are already planning how they'll leverage this massive day of giving. A critical piece of that strategy is segmenting their donor lists so they can craft appropriate individualized appeals to donors and would-be fundraising ambassadors. One element of that segmentation is determining who gave to your organization during last year's end-of-year giving season. In this step-by-step recipe, we'll share one way to do this using User Defined Rollups in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack.

For more on extending the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack for Giving Tuesday appeals along with savvy fundraising strategy, watch our free webinar, Seize #GivingTuesday Success with Fundraising Wisdom and Salesforce .

I'm always excited to see the amount of knowledge that can be delivered when you gather 60 strangers in a room, hand them stickies, markers, coffee...and maybe a bit of cruise captaining. With little more clue than "there will be lunch and coffee" on the official agenda, a new group of open source community contributors joined the worldwide NPSP Day movement in New York on Friday, marking the 12th convening in 12 months. We pretty much rocked the Big Apple with Salesforce non-profit knowledge.

Watching technology consumers turn into empowered contributors makes for a great highlight reel at the end of a week. So as look at our photos from NPSP Day, and get settled in San Francisco for the TrailheadX conference this week, let's get caught up on the latest and greatest happenings in the Power of Us Hub, shall we?

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DaizyLogik, a great group of folks creating custom solutions that tailor Salesforce for nonprofits, is the latest firm to join the Soapbox Engage Partner Program.

We're just a few days away from the next NPSP Day in New York, and I can't wait to jump right back into the unconference mix here in the US after the NPSP Day tour took a two-stop jaunt overseas.

Community events like these not only increase knowledge, but open our minds to a more creative position. They give us a chance to exit the day-to-day work and focus on exploring new opportunities. As of yet, we haven't had a Play-Doh breakout (soon, maybe?), but just working together as a community to solve common challenges, we've created some pretty innovative ideas.

To make the countdown to Friday a bit easier, I've done my best to collect one of the largest set of Power of Us Hub posts. So, find a cozy spot, sit back, and indulge in this week's content roundup.

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Nothing can cause more confusion between your finance and fundraising departments than the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requirements for donation acknowledgements. Never fear! We're here to shed a light on what often feels like a murky area.

The right thank you is essential to a nonprofit expressing exceptional gratitude and developing long-term relationships with donors. Below is a little inspiration from two organizations that get it right to help your creative juices flow for your next thank you letter or email.

We were all taught to say “thank you” when given a gift. Nonprofits are no different. Expressing timely and proper gratitude to donors when they make a gift to your organization is not only the right thing to do, it’s also key to cultivating sustaining donors and funding your mission.

The Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) provides a straightforward way to say thanks with a handy Email Acknowledgement button that triggers an automated email for one or multiple donations at a time. The beauty of the button is its simplicity with its use of a single email template with merge fields of your choice and letterhead you can customize to a degree. Whether that handy button and its simplicity is right for your organization depends on a few factors we’ll discuss below.

The opportunities to contribute to the increasing impact in our Salesforce non-profit world continue to grow. This week, I'm excited to highlight the great work of the NPSP Videography Team. They're a group of volunteers that wanted to see more organizations benefit from the Engagement Plans and Levels functionality in the NPSP, and delivered fantastic videos to make them more useful. All this without formal training in software video training, but a lot of heart and background in video to make an awesome end-product.

So while you're enjoying a tall glass of knowledge from the PUB Crawl this week, consider what unique talents you might have, and how you can bring those talents to our community to help us all continue to move the needle in the right direction.

Now, here's filled-to-the-top glass of Salesforce knowledge!

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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.

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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!

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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?