Salesforce and nonprofit starter pack

Agenda:

• Saleforce.com platform
• Open Source - Nonprofit Starter Pack
• What is it not doing that we want it to do? A peek into the future
• Pain points

Facilitator: Ryan

Participants: John, Lilia, Giselle, Scott, Jeff, Laura, Josh, Poonam, Kathryn, Jon, Steve, Peggy, Courtney, Neil, Bruce, Ryan, Ryan

• Steve - about the Salesforce Foundation:
  • It's a stunning piece of technology
  • Foundation had its genesis when it was used for a youth/ed org
  • Donating the platform - 10 free licenses, 11+ licenses are discounted
  • Huge NPOs started taking it on - e.g. Susan Komen
  • Even with discounts, selling so much Salesforce and
  • Foundation is NOT organized to care about nonprofits care about, organized to sell as much Salesforce as possible - and give back the revenue as grants
  • Foundation is a nonprofit, but it does not behave like one
  • Participant comment: His experience is that that Salesforce Foundation was extremely generous, but it is becoming more expensive, they are not willing to work with orgs smaller than Komen, universities but don't want to admit it
  • Question: How are they not behaving like a nonprofit?
  • Answer: They have a sales team, they work on commission, co-marketing, kickbacks
  • Salesforce Foundation is going to start giving out a bunch of money
  • If you have inside connections with the foundation, work them to get more $$$

• Nonprofit Sales Pack - past and future:
  • Early on, Salesforce Foundation was using the cutting edge capabilities of Salesforce
  • Labs/skunkworks - did things like skinning, tabs, provision, vertical app
  • Trying to adapt Salesforce's original B2B model to B2C which is more like the nonprofit world needs
  • Big changes since 2007: Adapting to become a better solution for fundraising. It does handle: donors, households, donations. Does NOT handle well membership, advocacy, K-12 stuff
  • Open source, BSD license, on Github repo - but you can only use it on the Salesforce platform...
  • Roundcorner - for-profit company that built fundraising platform NGO Connect - recently became positioning it as competitor for Blackbaud
  • SF sales team is going to prefer the solution with bigger commissions
  • NGO is much more well developed - seasonal address management (for your donors in the Hamptons in the summer...)
  • "Raiser's Edge is crap. And expensive crap."
  • Comment: SF has helped our org bring the data together and improve our profits. I want to adopt more Salesforce functionality, although I can't necessarily afford all the stuff
  • Comment: This situation is similar to Ebase - Open source solution built on Filemaker in the 90's. Now it's considered a joke. Hope NSP doesn't end up the same way... (Ebase didn't come from Microsoft, it was built by folks who were involved with the nonprofit sector)
  • Question: Explain Nonprofit Starter Pack to a CiviCRM user who may not
  • What's the value add?
  • Sharing/collaborating - e.g. grantor meetings
  • Salesforce: Comcast, Wells Fargo are using this platform
  • Salesforce brings interoperability with everyone because they're the 600-lb. gorilla (e.g. Wealth Engine)
  • We just organized our city and used Chatter to do it (Chatter is a Salesforce capability to organize a group around a theme) Youth get college help, ementoring by Chatter
  • How much $$$ in services/add-on licenses
  • What about managing the risk of dropping free license?
  • There are one-year contracts, there are positive influences in the culture, but there's no legal guarantees protecting your investment, grandfathering in, reputation risk
  • How could SF better serve NP community?
  • Zimbra example: don't pay for software, do pay for licenses, get support from developers not front-line support
  • Al Fresco (govt-level document management system) - if you want tech support, it's $10K, but also lots of tutorials, videos, etc.
  • Q: How is the tech support
  • A: Tech support is terrible, I go to forums
  • It's open source, but it's written in Apex (SF's proprietary language) - I don't have time to learn Apex. No one in my org knows how to use it. **It's a very bad product for my small org, and I don't have time to make it a better product.
  • Comment: For my org with many staff/volunteers, $1-2M budget
  • We struggled until we paid $15K
  • If you're not ready to invest, you could end up with a really sucky implementation for a really long time...
  • You can have a bad implementation "Shit, we need to invest again..."
  • Salesforce is a cultural shift to us. It brought a level of transparency that we are uncomfortable with!!!
  • Bigger business seems to have a very clear sense of metrics, outcomes
  • There is no specific "nonprofit support". Support engineers freak out when they hear NSP and tell you you need an
  • Gold rush mentality - business are focused on implementations because they are fun/big/glamorous - nobody is doing affordable support for small/mid-size
  • How do we help small/mid-size nonprofits who use Salesforce and grow the community that provides them services/support? Ryan thinks we can start with NSP
  • They don't have a lot of reason to be a 501c3 anymore...
  • 8000 orgs that have SF grants, only 30% using it
  • Great diversity in ways that people use SF. Focus is fundraising - how about case mgmt, education, grant management, volunteer management - more difficult to scale to serve those orgs/needs affordability
  • Shift from "customer" mentality to "community" mentality like other successful OS projects - perhaps SF would provide a grant to foster this
  • There is an opportunity right now for nonprofit