Soapbox Engage Blog

As I gear up for three awesome NPSP community events in the next four weeks (get ready Washington DC, San Francisco, and Vancouver), I decided it might be a good time to unpack from Dreamforce. With notes scribbled on the sides of business cards and flyers, I figure others are in the same boat, scratching their heads trying to remember everything they heard at Dreamforce.

How about we dive into the list of "wait, did someone tell me that I could do..." items in this week's 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 look at Dreamforce 2016 in the rearview mirror, it's obvious to see that this was an important inflection point for our nonprofit Salesforce community. Community members rallied support and resources behind the NPSP. Salesforce.org showcased the fantastic investments it's making into the NPSP. The NPSP gained its first gymnastics team sponsorship (see below).

In front of us is an incredible opportunity to focus on the impact we can make together on the world. I can't think of a better way to start the next leg of this journey than to post-Dreamforce detox with a tall glass of knowledge at the PUB Crawl. Shall we?

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

With Version 3.82, the NPSP app trades in its "Nonprofit Starter Pack" moniker for the new "Nonprofit Success Pack" name. In case you missed our earlier take on the name and the history of this valuable offering for nonprofits, we share this extended Release Notes Rundown:

Today is the first anniversary of the PUB Crawl, and I couldn't be more satisfied than to be writing it alongside individuals I've been honored to serve alongside in our Salesforce non-profit sector. The PUB Crawl was started to fill a gap I saw in our community's knowledge sharing. Others feel the same way about other areas in our community. Now it's time to combine our talents and take this vision further.

At the Goat Farm Retreat (it's a long story) this weekend in California, a group of dedicated individuals from across the US designed a plan to find and fill gaps in the non-profit Salesforce ecosystem. There's too much to cover in a PUB Crawl intro, so if you see any of the folks in the photo below at Dreamforce, ask them "what's up with this Goat Farm Retreat?"

Then, get ready to have your mind blown.

I'm excited to see this natural evolution within our ecosystem, and look forward to continuing to share more as we have a chance to collaborate with each other, and you, more. We're ready to help every organization leverage this technology to be successful.

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

Nonprofit Success Pack community days, or NPSP Days, are community-organized and operated events that bring together users, contributors, consultants, developers, and supporters of the Salesforce.org open source Nonprofit Success Pack. Events are focused on empowering users to better understand how to use the NPSP to be successful.

NPSP Days are open to all from prospective users to current Salesforce users, administrators to developers, interested nonprofit executives to consultants, to supporters of any kind! If you have an interest in the Salesforce.org Nonprofit Success Pack, you're welcome and encouraged to join an NPSP Day!

Community days have been held in Phoenix and Portland, Oregon. DC, San Francisco, and Vancouver are scheduled and coming soon with additional locations in the works.

Visit NPSPDay.org for further details and to register to attend! See you at an NPSP Day near you soon!

The Salesforce.org Nonprofit Success Pack matters. At Soapbox Engage, we get to see the difference it makes every day for the mission of the nonprofits we serve. And as a former nonprofit accidental techie, I am often caught up in thoughts of projects gone-by and how the Nonprofit Success Pack could have transformed efforts and increased impact.

Here are three scenes that often come to mind from this grizzled veteran’s nonprofit past. I humbly submit them, nostalgia-encrusted and mundanely personal as they may be, as emblematic of how the Nonprofit Success Pack has transformed nonprofit technology and why it matters.

We rundown the highlights of a YUUUUUGE release that adds Levels and Engagement Plans to the NPSP so nonprofits can be even more strategic in engaging with their supporters:

Behold! The Salesforce Nonprofit Starter Pack has become the Nonprofit Success Pack! We offer our take on the history of this insanely valuable solution for nonprofits, discuss names that might have been, and gush over the ways it empowers organizations to rock the world for social good:

Today, a mega-sized announcement came from the Salesforce.org world. The open source NPSP has grown up to become the world's most powerful CRM service for non-profit organizations, and today Salesforce.org has recognized this community-based success with the renaming of it as the Nonprofit Success Pack. We at Soapbox Engage celebrate this announcement by the Saleforce.org team, and are excited for the increased investment by Salesforce.org into the future.

I'll wax poetic in blog post in the near future about the incredible run the Nonprofit Starter Pack had, but for today, I'm excited to lift a glass and share a "prost!" from Munich, Germany. Here's to the future of the NPSP, and the growing success of our community!

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

Some partnerships feel so natural that you swear they existed long before they were ever made official. One such partnership is with the fine folks at Swift River Consulting who have been Salesforce nonprofit sector allies for more years than we can count. Meghan Morrison, Owner and Founder of Swift River, can do the counting for us, though:

Few things warm my heart more than drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee on a beautiful Boston morning and hearing the sound of stickies being slapped on whiteboards with great ideas for open source projects.

A rather odd pairing? I call it "fully caffeinated community collaboration" at its best. With the glow of the NPSP Sprint lighting the way to Dreamforce, grab a cup of your favorite energy drink, get ready for some community knowledge sharing, and get ready for 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!

Live from the NPSP community sprint in Boston, it's the PUB Crawl! As the first day wraps up, I'll keep the notes scribbling while drinking one Dunkin Donuts coffee after another for a great round-up next week. For now, enjoy last week's shared knowledge!

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

Some people have called our NPSP Release Notes Rundown videos "incredible" (me), "thrilling" (me), and even "the greatest thing to hit the small screen since Homestar Runner" (me, and you should definitely look that up).

After a brief hiatus, the 60-second videos that give you the highlights of every NPSP release are back with episode v3.79! So grab a 5-kernel bag of popcorn and a cup of your favorite Monday morning beverage, and let's start your week right, shall we?

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

After a brief personal hiatus, the Release Notes Rundown is back to share the highlights of the 3.79 release of the Nonprofit Starter Pack with its support for translated Record Types. Plus cuteness. Oh so much cuteness:

Getting a chance to bring together members of our community is always great, which is why my jet-lagged face still holds a late night smile after a fantastic NPSP Day Portland on Friday. Together, we have so much to share, and we're excited to announce the newest city on the NPSP Day tour: San Francisco!

Grab your morning beverage and some sourdough toast and join me for this week's PUB Crawl.

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

Coffee and microbrew isn't the only thing bubbling up in Portland these days.

On Friday, we were excited to bring together the Nonprofit Starter Pack (NPSP) community of Portland together for the inaugural NPSP Day Portland. This was an opportunity for community members to spend the day sharing best practices, learning from leading practitioners and developers, and networking. Throughout the day, we tackled a wide-ranging set of items, including:

This is the final post in our #GivingTuesday series, with tips to personalize your follow up with donors. Check out the third post in the series on activating your allies. Save the date: July 28th we will close out the series with a live webinar. Reserve your spot now!

This is the third post in our #GivingTuesday series, with ideas to activate your community Check out the second post in the series on crafting your message. Save the date: July 28th we will close out the series with a live webinar. Reserve your spot now!

With the latest update to Soapbox Donations, you can collect exactly the data you want from your donors using simple tools that open up powerful possiblities. Add virtually any Salesforce Lead field of you wish to a secure Soapbox Donations form easily and quickly. Define default values. Set hidden values to pass to the Lead record. Easily format the display of fields with preset keywords.

Interested in learning more? Register for our free webinar this Thursday at 1 pm ET for details as well as handy use cases covering membership application forms, newsletter sign ups, and more!

This is the second post in our #GivingTuesday series, sharing some tried and true tips on creating and testing your call to action.  Check out the first post in the series on planning. Save the date: July 28th we will close out the series with a live webinar. Reserve your spot now!