But It’s Not About The Product.
Yesterday, Salesforce announced a new, next-generation Nonprofit Cloud product (link to official product launch page, link to more detailed post in a Nonprofit Community Group).
There are plenty of technical details to unpack, but the biggest takeaway is that the future of nonprofit features from Salesforce will be on a product that is not compatible with the current app (the Nonprofit Success Pack, or NPSP). In practical terms, this means that existing Salesforce nonprofit customers will need to undergo a full data migration to a new Salesforce org if/when they decide to start using the new product.
This announcement has—obviously—sparked a lot of discussion about what this means for the nonprofit ecosystem. This article from Michael Kolodner is one of the better takes I’ve seen if you want to dig into the specifics, which can be summarized as “no action for current nonprofit customers needed in the next few years.” At Pedal Lucid, we agree that NPSP isn't going anywhere and this announcement shouldn’t be an urgent call to action to re-evaluate Salesforce.
The element that is timely is a wake-up call for organizations that don’t have a clear technology strategy or the structure in place to understand, evaluate, and decide what to do with this type of news. This inflection point is a reminder that technology changes constantly, and the organizations that are the most successful using tech are the ones who:
- Understand that one platform or product choice will be a much smaller factor in their long-term success (or not) vs the ability to use and manage the tools they have
- Have structures in place that promote the continuous, thoughtful improvement of existing technology systems
- Build and maintain a strategic technology vision and roadmap
- Can identify and articulate the value in the systems they currently use
- Evaluate new tools/opportunities as they arise to determine whether they align with the strategy
- Understand the true cost/benefit of change before making a big switch
These principles apply to organizations of all shapes and sizes and can be scaled appropriately to meet resource constraints.
For additional context, it's worth noting that the current NPSP product is simply the most recent iteration of a variety of nonprofit tools built on the platform that have evolved over the years: NGOC, Foundation Connect, various household models, etc... You could argue this is a more fundamental shift because the nonprofit product will no longer be managed by a separate entity (Salesforce.com purchased the standalone company Salesforce.org a few years ago, and this is a full revamp under the Salesforce.com brand) but it's not the first time there's been a big change in 'best practice' for running a nonprofit on Salesforce.
Current or potential Salesforce customers:
- Might be well-served by continuing to embrace and invest in NPSP with the understanding they might want to re-instance in the next 3-5 years
- Might choose to embrace the cutting-edge new SKUs immediately, with the understanding there will likely be some growing pains
- Might choose to move forward with a different CRM if considering a large investment in the near term to avoid being caught in the middle of two product generations
- May pause significant investment or projects for the next year or so
It’s important to understand that these are all totally viable options!
If you're feeling caught off guard by the announcement and nervous about what this means for your organization, that may be an indication that you should be paying more attention to the success factors listed at the top of this article than the tool selection choices at the bottom. This isn’t the first big change and it won’t be the last.
