The New World of. An in-depth review of top fundraising applications built on the Salesforce.com platform. Applications Reviewed:

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1 The New World of Donor Management Apps for NonProfits An in-depth review of top fundraising applications built on the Salesforce.com platform Applications Reviewed: Affinaquest by Affinaquest Causeview by Breakeven Luminate CRM by Blackbaud (formerly a product of Convio, rev 4/14) Nonprofit Starter Pack by the Salesforce.com Foundation roundcause by roundcorner (rev 11/13)

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction...3 About the Salesforce.com Platform...5 Affinaquest...8 Causeview...12 Luminate CRM (rev 4/14)...17 Nonprofit Starter Pack...23 roundcause (rev 11/13)...27 Conclusion...32 Important Disclaimer The information contained in this report is as true and accurate as we could possibly make it at the time of its writing. All information in this report is based on public information from each software vendor s website, our own observations from using and/or testing each product, or from direct communications with each vendor s staff members. Software applications are continually changing, so keep in mind that this report is accurate as of August 2012; you should always confirm information from each vendor before making a purchasing decision heller consulting

3 Introduction Nonprofits today have a new world of donor management applications to choose from. Many vendors are developing these applications on the Salesforce.com platform, making the promise of Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) for nonprofits more attainable than ever (see our recent study, Insights into CRM for Nonprofits, available at At Heller Consulting, we work to improve fundraising tools through our relationships with technology vendors that serve the sector, and we share our knowledge through free materials available on our website ( and blog ( In this paper, we take an in-depth look at today s donor management applications built on the Salesforce.com platform. We approach each application keeping in mind the needs of a typical nonprofit that uses a blend of fundraising approaches to raise $5 million or more annually. Organizations of this size typically have been using traditional fundraising software and have high expectations of what new donor management applications can do to help them achieve their goals. In this report, we review unique aspects of each product, address what we like best about each, and note some important things to consider before adopting each product. Our goal is to help you plan your organization s move into today s world of donor management tools. We hope this report will encourage you to further investigate software applications and contact Heller Consulting if we can assist you with the selection, planning or implementation process. The Donor Management Applications For nonprofit organizations looking to move their CRM systems and processes to Salesforce.com, a donor management system is often at or near the top of the list of initial applications to implement. This report focuses on five of the top Salesforce.com based donor management applications aimed at mid- to enterprise-size nonprofits. The applications we review (in alphabetical order) are: Affinaquest by Affinaquest Causeview by Breakeven Luminate CRM by Blackbaud (formerly a product of Convio) Nonprofit Starter Pack by the Salesforce.com Foundation roundcause by roundcorner 3

4 What is an App? You may be familiar with Salesforce.com as the leading Cloud-based CRM solution used by tens of thousands of companies and organizations worldwide. One of the great innovations of Salesforce.com is its open architecture, which allows vendors to develop applications, or Apps, that can be installed on the Salesforce.com platform to increase its functionality. The donor management applications we review in this report are Apps that enhance the baseline for-profit functionality of the Salesforce.com platform to suit nonprofit fundraising needs. Essentially, these Apps customize Salesforce.com, turning it into a sophisticated fundraising tool. Each App approaches this customization in unique ways, with differing ramifications for usability, potential for further customization, and the types of organizations each is best suited for. Vendor Involvement Each vendor mentioned in this report participated in its development by providing sandbox product environments for us to test, and making staff members available to discuss functionality and usage with our consulting team. Vendors did not have editorial control over the content of the report, nor did we receive any financial or other support from any vendor. 4

5 About the salesforce.com platform Salesforce.com is the platform for all of the Apps reviewed in this paper. It has been a force (pun intended) in the nonprofit sector for a decade, but in recent years has seen accelerated adoption, by both nonprofit organizations and software vendors developing solutions for nonprofits. Having multiple choices of Apps allows a greater number of nonprofits to use Salesforce.com in a way that functions according to their needs ranging from supporting a robust membership model to the ability to track government grants. Having multiple choices of Apps allows a greater number of nonprofits to use Salesforce.com in a way that functions according to Through the Salesforce.com Foundation, their needs. salesforce.com grants nonprofits 10 free licenses, and provides significant discounts on additional licenses and features. This can be an attractive offer for nonprofits looking to mitigate the maintenance costs of their existing software. However, there are ongoing costs for user licenses and data storage that should be taken into account when moving to Salesforce.com. That said, Salesforce.com offers attractive benefits. Following are some of these benefits in several key areas, as well as areas that require some extra evaluation when considering a move to the platform. Customizability. One of the most common wishes expressed by our clients is to reduce the number of systems maintained in-house. Part of the appeal of Salesforce.com is that the platform is flexible enough to theoretically allow an organization to move the majority of its key business processes into its Salesforce.com instance. Additionally, Salesforce.com is a widely used platform that provides the ability to integrate with external systems when necessary. salesforce.com (the company that makes Salesforce.com) also hosts the AppExchange, a marketplace containing both free and paid Apps that are designed to customize aspects of Salesforce.com and provide additional functionality such as marketing, business intelligence and project management, among many others. Availability. This is one of the most-cited reasons for migrating to Salesforce.com. Many organizations, particularly those that have offices or staff members in multiple locations, need a way to access their fundraising database easily and from anywhere, whether they are at home or on the road. Using Salesforce.com, it s possible to access the system from any web browser (even on an ipad ). Additionally, Salesforce.com has free Apps for iphone and Android smartphones, which means that it s possible to do data entry in the palm of your hand. Another perk worth mentioning is the minimal amount of downtime 5

6 for server maintenance, Salesforce.com platform updates, or workstation updates and patches. Social Media. Each App covered in this report has access to Salesforce.com s Social Contacts, which allows visibility into your contacts Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles and Klout score, though Social Contacts is limited and should not be considered a true integration. There is also a free App called Salesforce for Twitter and Facebook that has more capabilities to track and manage conversations. If an App has its own social media functionality, we will call that out. Administration. No matter which App a nonprofit selects, it is critically important that the nonprofit be ready to manage the database. Salesforce.com, and the Apps that are used on the platform, are dynamic and growing. Using Salesforce.com requires a clear role at your organization for someone who is tasked with its ongoing administration and maintenance, and also helps to guide organizational use and processes within the Salesforce.com ecosystem. Like any new system, Salesforce.com requires a strategy for training and upkeep, maintenance and administration for the lifecycle of its use at your organization. Support Confusion. Each App comes with its own support options, and some Apps, particularly those that are free, have no support options. It can sometimes be difficult to attribute an issue to a particular App or native Salesforce.com platform functionality. Reporting. A critical strategy to success in implementing the Salesforce.com platform is understanding the metrics that you need to get out of it. In the case of using Salesforce.com with Apps, extra attention must be paid to how the Apps have structured information within Salesforce.com. Sometimes successful reporting is a matter of both adjusting your business processes to place data in accessible places within the platform, and adjusting the platform to better match your data. Therefore, before implementing the Salesforce.com platform, you should consider how you want to report on your information. Data Model Basics The Salesforce.com CRM platform was originally designed for for-profit businesses to manage their sales processes. While this has some commonalities with fundraising that make Salesforce.com attractive as a potential platform for donor management, there are aspects of native Salesforce.com that are significantly different from fundraising and require addressing before Salesforce.com can be suitable for nonprofits purposes: 6

7 An Account (a business or organization) is the primary type of record, and it can have associated Contacts. There is no native ability for everyone to see individuals that are not affiliated with an Account. There is no native ability to handle financial transactions; you can simply track financial opportunities. To understand the effectiveness of any fundraising App at a core level, one must understand the use of the Account/Contact model and why it is important. There are four key decisions that each vendor in this report had to make to adapt the platform to fundraising: How to manage individuals How to manage households of individuals How to account for donation transactions How to manage the difference between tracking proposals and tracking the actual gift received in Salesforce.com These fundamental decisions impact much of each system s functionality, ease of reporting, and ability to integrate with other Apps. This is why, in our reviews, we discuss the Account/Contact model and the model for handling financial transactions. 7

8 Affinaquest Affinaquest, by Affinaquest, is the brainchild of the creator of Millennium, now a product of Sage. Affinaquest has decades of fundraising software experience behind it, which shows in its design and functionality. Fundraisers will appreciate little touches throughout the system that make it clear that Affinaquest knows its audience. Affinaquest s philosophy can be described as focusing on its core competency powerful fundraising software and allowing customers to add on other Apps that are specialties in their own areas. Data Model and Functionality Affinaquest s philosophy can be described as focusing on its core competency powerful fundraising software and allowing customers to add on other Apps that are specialties in Demographic their own areas. Unlike other fundraising Apps, the Affinaquest perspective is from the Account record. Starting from creating an Account record, you can create a Corporation, Organization or Household. Contacts easily roll up into Households the main function of the Household record is to aggregate information from the Contact records. The order of creating records is important; it s a training issue to make sure that Accounts are created first so Contacts can be added to them. Recognizing that it is a common need to mail different types of material to different addresses, Affinaquest has built Addresses to allow multiple active addresses that can be specified for different purposes. Affinaquest has three spots to record relationships on a Contact record: An Employer relationship, Relationships with Accounts, and Relationships with Contacts. Affinaquest offers an innovative visualization of a relationship tree on any Account or Contact record, which makes it easier to get an immediate understanding of how constituents are connected. Diagram courtesy of Affinaquest Starting from the Account record, you can create a Corporation, Organization or Household. 8

9 Financial Affinaquest is not shy about creating custom objects to refine Salesforce.com into a sophisticated donor management system. For example, Affinaquest makes a distinction between recording major giving solicitations/proposals and received donations, using Opportunities for the former and a custom object called Gifts for the latter. Opportunities and Gifts are associated with Accounts first. Affinaquest makes a distinction between Gift Credits and Soft Credits, which it calls Gift Recognition Credits. This makes partial crediting of gifts easier, and also creates a way to separate financial reporting from recognition reporting. Gifts also have associated Transactions, which track how much of the gift has been received. Pledge management is sophisticated in Affinaquest, with many features that fundraisers are accustomed to, such as automatically calculating the number of installments, tracking conditional pledges, and handling irregular scheduling. Ultimately, all financial reporting centers on Transactions. This makes financial reporting very transparent. There are also custom objects for Appeals, Appeal and Campaign participation, and Premiums, among others. Affinaquest has built a custom object called Fundraising Campaigns into a centerpiece of the application. Many fields and visuals have been added to enable quick and easy performance and pipeline reporting. Fundraising Campaigns can be thought of as the highest level of tracking fundraising activity, and traditional Salesforce.com Campaigns are then associated with Fundraising Campaigns. In a nod to best practices, all gifts are expected to be entered in Batch mode, which is helpful for enforcing financial controls. Affinaquest currently does not offer credit card processing within the application. Major Gifts All moves management in Affinaquest is done using Opportunities, which never crosses over with cash transactions. There are many types of Opportunity Record Types to define the type of proposal that is being cultivated. Each Record Type offers its own custom fields and Stage tracking. Nonprofits can use Stage Analysis to easily see how long various Opportunities stay at each Stage. There are additional associated custom objects that go deeper into Opportunity management. Contact Roles are used to manage solicitor relationships on Opportunities. 9

10 Ease of Basic Processes Affinaquest provides a robust structure, which nonprofits must configure for their own needs, such as setting up Contact Roles and Quid Pro Quos. That said, the company offers minimal best practices documentation, and so a clear understanding of your processes is critical to successful configuration. The application has not built in certain bells and whistles, such as real-time duplicate checking at the point of entry, or enforcing Account setup before Contact entry. For example, there is nothing to stop someone from creating orphan Contact records (what Salesforce.com calls Private contacts) with no Account, and there is no duplicate management capability beyond that offered within Salesforce.com. One of our favorite One of our favorite features in Affinaquest is the variety of key performance indicators (KPIs) that appears on Account/Contact and Campaign records. These indicators make it possible for fundraisers to instantly comprehend basic information such as how long it s been since a donor was last contacted, or how good a prospect is based on calculating several factors. features in Affinaquest is the variety of key performance indicators (KPIs) that appears on Account/Contact and Campaign records. Affinaquest makes reporting easier than it might otherwise be in Salesforce.com by making key pieces of information available on other objects essentially passing through information so that certain fields can be reached from a report that normally would not be available in standard reports. However, Affinaquest comes with only a small number of basic financial reports. Affinaquest s approach is that a large number of semi-customizable reports is not always useful to customers. Affinaquest will assist with creation of specific reports, although it would behoove a nonprofit to have someone on staff who understands the data model to create reports. There are Acknowledgement Types in the system, and the capability of basic acknowledgements, but there is not a complete acknowledgements process. The ease with which a large package like Affinaquest can integrate with other Salesforce.com based Apps is always a consideration, given that one of the main selling points for choosing the Salesforce.com platform is the capability to extend it beyond fundraising alone. Affinaquest has taken an extra step in this area to develop its own 10

11 AppQuest application exchange. Products available on this exchange have been pre-screened by Affinaquest to ensure that they work well with Affinaquest and do not cause any mishaps during installation and configuration. This should allow an organization to select Apps with more confidence, and helps explain why Affinaquest is not developing these related functionalities themselves. The bottom line on Affinaquest Affinaquest is an application that is narrowly focused, but goes very deep in its chosen area. Affinaquest is not ideal for nonprofits who just want to get data into Salesforce.com quickly. It s designed to be used in a specific way, and that way matches up well with best practices in the nonprofit sector. Affinaquest is a product that is still in relatively early development. For example, complete product documentation and recommended best practices have not been released yet. While we believe the product is on solid footing with its data model and core business processes, there are some unknowns, such as how or whether it will process credit card donations, offer more canned reporting, manage duplicates, develop into online marketing/ fundraising, or integrate with social media tools. Affinaquest support could be an area of concern for larger organizations that are accustomed to typical support options of software companies. Affinaquest eschews traditional phone support in favor of crowdsourcing online forums that are moderated by Affinaquest staff. Affinaquest also offers and live chat support. Affinaquest may be a good option for organizations with the following characteristics: Expectations for an application with well-thought-out classic fundraising business processes Considering extending the Salesforce.com platform beyond fundraising Use major giving and planned giving as primary fundraising strategies 11

12 Causeview Causeview, offered by Breakeven, does a good job of streamlining everyday fundraising practices and bringing frequently-used data front and center for easy access and use by fundraisers. Causeview attempts to leverage as much native Salesforce.com platform functionality as possible, and is built on the Nonprofit Starter Pack (see p. 23 for more information about the Nonprofit Starter Pack). This shows in the data model and workflows to manage the prospect development process. One of the things we like best about Causeview is how it integrates online donation processing into the application. The moves management and stewardship features are also innovative. One of the things we like best about Causeview is how it integrates online donation processing into the application. Data Model and Functionality Demographic Causeview uses a hybrid data model based on the Nonprofit Starter Pack with some customization. It includes an Individual bucket account for individuals with no employer, and allows Contacts to be added to Households. When individuals are linked to a Household, it becomes possible to copy addresses and phone numbers from the Household to the Contacts in the Household, and to run a report of total Household giving (summary giving fields are on the roadmap for the next 2012 product release). Causeview uses the Nonprofit Starter Pack s relationship functionality with no changes. Diagram courtesy of Breakeven Causeview s data model includes an Individual bucket account for individuals with no employer, and allows Contacts to be added to Households. 12

13 Financial Causeview s approach is that Opportunities are best used for various types of proposals. For financial transactions, there is a custom object called Transactions, which uses a number of Record Types to differentiate between cash gifts, grants, event purchases, and others. This approach simplifies financial reporting, since everything comes down to Transactions and only one object is needed to access all types of gifts. Even pledges are treated as a Transaction, which makes it easier to incorporate pledges into financial reporting. Soft credits are added via a custom object, which makes it easy to credit multiple donors with full or partial credit. The options for setting up financial codes look familiar to any nonprofit who has used fundraising software. Campaigns can be thought of as strategic revenue streams. Campaigns consist of a set of related Appeal codes, which can be very specific (down to the donation form level) to track what works for fundraising. The Campaign and Appeal objects have been built to provide easy access to custom goal and performance information in reports. Appeals can be broken down further into segments, which roll up to the Appeal. Causeview offers fully Causeview offers fully integrated recurring gift integrated recurring gift processing, with minimal hands-on effort needed from nonprofit staff members. The Causeview processing, with minimal profile is synced with the payment provider, and hands-on effort needed transactions are processed and uploaded into Causeview automatically. Workflow rules can from nonprofit automatically contact the donor in case of a staff members. declined payment or an upcoming card expiration date, or if preferred, create a Task for the fundraiser to follow up on. Transactions also can be refunded directly from Causeview. Also, Causeview offers PCI-compliant credit card processing from within the application via Optimal, Authorize.net, PayPal or Stripe. Causeview s batch gift entry tool looks a little different from the typical spreadsheet-like interface that many fundraisers are accustomed to. Instead of basing a batch on a template (which is not currently available), batch pre-sets are used, and the interface looks like one gift at a time is being entered with selected fields automatically completed. One item to note is that event registrations are not currently processed through batch. Instead, event registrations are processed one at a time on the Event Campaign page. Breakeven is committed to revamping batch functionality in Q1 of 2013, including the ability to create batch templates and process event registrations in batch mode. 13

14 Major Gifts In Causeview, the prospecting process begins by creating a Lead record for a Major Gift or Grant prospect. When the Lead has been qualified, there s a smooth process to convert the Lead into a Contact with an Opportunity already attached. From that point, the prospect is moved through the normal Salesforce.com Opportunity pipeline. Causeview features an innovative way to manage a donor through various recognition levels for stewardship purposes. Fundraisers will like how the system saves time and effort by automating the creation of tasks and/or communications with donors. It does a great job of using Salesforce.com s native workflow processes to automatically Fundraisers will like how update donors when they reach the next level the system saves time of recognition, and make it easier for fundraisers to communicate with both current and lapsed and effort by automating donors. As part of the implementation process, the creation of tasks nonprofits must specify their donor levels, how they d like Salesforce.com to automate and/or communications stewardship tasks, and how they d like the with donors. system to alert them of stewardship work to do. Events When it comes to events, Causeview focuses on event registration rather than a complete end-to-end event management tool. Events have their own Campaign Type. Once the Event Campaign is set up, an Action Page can be easily created in order to place an event registration form on a website. Registrations can also be processed directly by staff members on the Event Campaign record. Registrants have the option to pay for and register their guests, who are then automatically added to Causeview. The main drawback to this approach is that event registrations should be added one at a time, instead of being included in a gift batch, which may not be ideal for high-volume situations. Events functionality is planned to be significantly enhanced in Ease of Basic Processes When it comes to basic records management, Causeview has layered minimal custom processing over Nonprofit Starter Pack functionality, which means a couple of things: There is opportunity for nonprofits to customize their own business processes, and it is likely that Causeview would work well with other Apps in the Salesforce.com ecosystem. For duplicate management, there is a basic custom Contact de-duplication tool, though that is likely not going to be enough for most nonprofits. Breakeven recommends deploying DupeBlocker, an App by CRM Fusion that is available free to nonprofits. 14

15 One of the things that sets Causeview apart is the simple way that Campaigns can be integrated with an organization s website to provide a seamless experience for online giving with no cumbersome syncing process. When setting up a new Campaign, it s a one-click step to get customized code that can be added to any web page to insert a donation form (or an event registration page, for example). Customers can use the default pages, or customize them to meet their needs during the implementation process. When a donor uses the form to make a donation, the transaction is immediately processed and added to the donor s record in Causeview. Causeview includes duplicate checking to ensure it does not add a duplicate record to the system. Causeview comes with dozens of standard reports that can be customized. Due to the careful design of the system and the strategic placement of custom fields, nonprofits can easily reach many types of data that are necessary for day-to-day financial and performance reporting. There is also a suite of Dashboards that are ready out-of-the-box. One of the innovations we like about Causeview is the attention paid to acknowledgment and receipting. There is a custom object for Receipting, as well as a custom object for Letters, which streamlines the acknowledgement process. Any given acknowledgement can be merged directly into Microsoft Word. Receipts can be easily reproduced or voided if needed. 15

16 The bottom line on Causeview Causeview has thoughtfully anticipated some of the most challenging needs of nonprofits wishing to move their donor database to the Cloud, and done so in ways that leverage the Salesforce.com platform well. Integrated payment processing and moves management are particular strengths. Causeview is built on the foundation of the Nonprofit Starter Pack, which means that it will integrate well with other uses of Salesforce.com. The application offers customizability: Each nonprofit works with Breakeven to customize its donation forms, moves management/recognition processes, and possibly core records management. Causeview may be a good option for nonprofits with the following characteristics: Plan to expand Salesforce.com usage beyond fundraising Minimal web skills on staff, yet want to run integrated campaigns or online event registration Use recurring giving as an important strategy Have recognition societies or donor levels to manage 16

17 Luminate CRM rev 4/14 Luminate CRM was spun off in as a separate product and descendant of the original Common Ground product offered by Convio, which was acquired by Blackbaud in mid Data Model and Functionality At both the Account and Contact levels, Luminate CRM offers helpful summary fields for several popular fundraisingrelated totals. Demographic Luminate CRM uses a Household/Organization Account model. Every Household Contact belongs to a Household Account (a one-person household will have both a Household Contact Record and a Household Account record). Organization Accounts have Organization Contacts associated with them, though those Contacts do not necessarily have to have their own Households if the nonprofit s main point of contact with the person is through the Organization this is essentially the default Salesforce.com model of Account/Contact relationships. An Organization Contact can be promoted to a Household Contact if the Organization develops a relationship with the Contact beyond their affiliation with the Organization. One interesting feature is that there can be one Preferred Contact per Household or Organization, which is designed to help produce one-per mailings. One area where nonprofits will have to develop their own business processes is to determine whether opt-outs and solicit codes on Contacts should apply to the Household as well. There are not built-in tools to handle this or provide guidance. At both the Account and Contact levels, Luminate CRM offers helpful summary fields for several popular fundraising-related totals, using both hard and soft credit; lifetime giving and calendar year-to-date giving are two examples. However, the criteria on which the summary fields are based are not editable, which can make them less useful to customers. Luminate CRM works best when there is one mailing address per Contact. Nonprofits that frequently need to select among multiple addresses per Contact record (such as seasonal addresses, school addresses or voting addresses) may find it challenging to pull together a mailing list in one fell swoop. Additionally, the application does not provide a solid solution for managing contacts that truly have a dual relationship with the nonprofit. For example, when a person has his or her own record, but you d like to send something to them because they are CEO of a company, it is challenging to get the addressee as well as the address correct. It is also challenging to ensure that 17

18 people can tell which contact to send to at a given company, when there are additional contacts beyond the Primary Contact. Luminate CRM uses a relationship widget to visually display relationship links between a Contact and other Contacts or Accounts. Many users appreciate this feature, which is excellent at showing all relationships in one place. However, reporting on these relationships is complicated, especially if the Relationship Widget is being used to track solicitor relationships. Luminate CRM uses a Household/Organization Account model. Financial Luminate CRM uses the Opportunity object (renamed Donations) to record both prospective gifts (proposals) and received gifts. This design does not negatively impact reporting on anticipated versus received gifts. However, pledges and recurring gifts are custom objects, which can quickly make reporting cumbersome if donations are required as well as pledges and recurring gifts. Additionally, the objects cannot be totaled in the same column, which is something often desired. On the positive side, this structure prevents double counting of the original pledge and associated payments. The gift record options are robust. There are different record types for important types of gifts, allowing users to have various picklist options and page layouts depending on the record type (such as Major Gift versus Planned Gift). The batch tool is also fairly strong, allowing entry of many gifts at once, the ability to process credit cards within the batch, and alerting users of potential pending donations (such as outstanding pledges). Users can add custom fields from Donations to batch templates but there are some limitations. Customizing the Batch tool, beyond the options provided by Blackbaud, is not possible. To simplify gift entry, users are able to add segment codes to gifts, which then default to associated Campaigns. Designations are robust, allowing for splitting of gifts between 18

19 different funds. However, the inability to split a gift by Campaign is deemed by many clients to be problematic, if not for new gifts, then for the migration of historical data. There is also a tool to allow users to post gifts to the General Ledger (GL), which essentially locks particular fields down to prevent editing of key fields used for reconciliation. The GL file generated through this process, while useful, may need additional work to meet the needs of all nonprofits and their financial accounting systems. To simplify gift entry, users are able to add segment codes to gifts, which then default to associated Campaigns. Major Gifts As a starting point, there are fields for Prospect Intelligence on the Contact record for tracking Inclination and other basic prospect information. The values on these tables are customizable. Solicitors can be handled in multiple ways, and nonprofits can choose to use the method that makes the most sense to them. Naturally, there are considerations for each. Proposal management uses mostly standard Salesforce.com functionality, which is powerful. This makes it easy to take advantage of the native pipeline reporting: with a few changes in terminology, native Salesforce.com reports become useful for fundraisers. Reporting and tasks are handled very well and meet the needs of most nonprofit clients. Events Luminate CRM comes with Events management functionality that is designed to track Gala and Golf events. The Gala setup can be tweaked for other types of events such as fashion shows, receptions, etc. This functionality is well-developed and offers the ability to track attendees, guests, expenses, and various registration levels. There is also a check-in manager, which allows users to check people in onsite. The functionality is designed to let fundraisers review an invitation list before it s finalized, and it s easy to mark registrants as attended. Volunteers Luminate CRM comes with traditional volunteer management functionality. It is easy to set up Jobs and Shifts, and match volunteers to shifts based on qualifications and availability. 19

20 Ease of Basic Processes Adding a new record to Luminate CRM is very easy, but there are many steps to ensure that all people in a household are created and linked to each other properly, and that their salutations are updated correctly. Similarly, when deceasing a contact who has a surviving spouse, there are multiple steps to follow in a particular order. Changing an address is very easy, and the system automatically copies the old address to a historic address, ensuring data is not lost. Also, for better and worse, it is very easy to change an address for all members of a Household at once, though it would be nice to have some additional automation here, particularly when performing batch updates. The batch process for gift entry is smooth and quick. Templates can be set up to quickly get going on high-volume gift entry. Luminate CRM offers a helpful Campaign setup wizard, which walks the user through establishing a multi-appeal Campaign. There are several fields added to the Campaign object which make it easier to slice and dice Campaigns in reporting by their purposes, modes, and other categories. Both applications offer Luminate CRM offers a suite of pre-built fundraising reports that are highly customizable. a helpful Campaign setup wizard, which walks the Producing a mailing list using Reports is user through establishing relatively straightforward as long as the selection of mailing to Accounts or Contacts a multi-appeal Campaign. is made at the beginning of the process. The system does not provide a tool for easily determining which address to use, such as a hierarchy for determining when to use Work, Seasonal, etc. There are a couple of aspects of producing mailing lists that require workarounds: including Organization Contacts and Household Contacts in the same list, and selecting which Organization Contact should be included if there are multiple Contacts for an Organization. While Luminate CRM offers a built-in mail merge tool, it is somewhat limited and requires using the Salesforce.com integration with Word, which does not support Word Some nonprofits opt instead to use low-cost third-party apps to create acknowledgement letters and other mail merge letters. Blackbaud is a very established company, with forums, a knowledgebase, live chat, Online and Phone Support. The company offers web-based trainings for users as well. Luminate CRM s strict use of Record Types, and the resulting impact on Page Layouts, is potentially limiting to an organization s planned development of the Salesforce 20

21 platform. As with every App, if an organization desires to add additional Apps to the Luminate CRM environment, they should be thoroughly tested in a sandbox environment to verify compatibility with Luminate CRM. Luminate CRM is intricately integrated with two other Blackbaud applications, Luminate Online and Luminate Analytics. Together, these three applications form a CRM suite designed for large organizations. Luminate CRM is intricately integrated with two other Blackbaud applications, Luminate CRM customers typically use Luminate Online and Luminate Online for their online marketing and fundraising because of the built-in integration between the two systems. While atypical, Luminate Analytics. it is possible for an organization to purchase Luminate CRM and not use Luminate Online. When both systems are in use, they are synchronized every few minutes by Luminate Integration, which allows both systems to operate in near-real time synchronization. Luminate Integration exchanges constituent, gift, TeamRaiser, personal fundraising and e-commerce data, and mirrors event data between each system. Duplicate management between the two applications also is integrated, which is incredibly useful. Integration with other online systems may be challenging, as there are many required fields and processes that could conflict with other systems. Chapter-based organizations that are considering the Luminate suite will want to evaluate the Multi-Center functionality of Luminate Online. Multi-Center helps partition Luminate Online so that multiple entities (usually chapters) can each have their own area and groups of constituents. On the Luminate CRM side, Multi-Center is meant to replicate the Territory Management functionality of Salesforce.com, which doesn t work with Luminate CRM. Implementing Multi-Center in Luminate Online has ramifications for the Salesforce.com CRM system scalability and design that can be significant. The third element of the Luminate suite, Luminate Analytics, is designed to serve as an in-house aggregator of CRM and Online data, as well as function as an enterpriselevel reporting tool. Luminate Analytics powers all the duplicate management features of Luminate CRM and calculates all the Gift Summaries on the contact and account records. The List Builder functionality, based on the Vertica analytics platform, makes it easy to query data from both Luminate CRM and Luminate Online, and then export the results into a Campaign Segment or a Luminate Online Group. There is also a powerful reporting and dashboard tool, based on JasperSoft technology, which enables holistic analysis of CRM and Online data. 21

22 Luminate CRM is a site license, not a per-seat license, which means that everyone at the nonprofit who has a Salesforce.com login will be able to access the Luminate CRM standard fields. This will allow people to use the system to build custom objects and applications, secure in the foundation that Luminate CRM provides. There is a lot on the roadmap for Luminate CRM. Blackbaud is constantly looking to improve the integration with Luminate Online while adding more content to the integration. Sustainer Giving is going to be completely re-architected in Also planned are continued improvements to the batch gift entry tool. Luminate CRM is a site license, not a per-seat license, which means that everyone at the nonprofit who has a Salesforce.com login will be able to access the Luminate CRM standard fields. The bottom line on Luminate CRM When an organization signs up for Luminate CRM, they should be prepared to use the whole Luminate suite, including Luminate Online and Luminate Analytics. Blackbaud has focused its Luminate CRM development efforts on strengthening the integration with Luminate Online. Blackbaud has also placed emphasis on gathering the most popular ideas from its user community to include in future releases. Luminate CRM is a large App that interacts heavily with many Salesforce.com standard objects, which means that Luminate CRM customers should carefully design and test additional non-fundraising uses of Salesforce.com. Luminate CRM may be a good option for organizations with the following characteristics: Organizations that are already using the Luminate Online suite or are moving to Luminate Online Organizations with large team fundraising events (walks, rides, etc.) Large organizations with mature business processes that are ready to adopt Luminate CRM s best practices 22

23 Nonprofit starter pack The Nonprofit Starter Pack (NPSP) is really a series of six managed packages (another term for App ). These packages are offered free of charge by the Salesforce.com Foundation. Today s NPSP is a conceptual descendant of the NPSP is the ability to Foundation s Nonprofit Template, though the NPSP choose an account shares no common code with the Nonprofit Template and has been developed completely model that best suits differently into a series of managed packages. your needs. This enables clients to update the Apps when new functionality is added or bugs are fixed. Additionally, nonprofits can opt to implement some or all of the Apps if they require greater functionality. These Apps are: Contacts and Organizations Households Recurring Donations Relationships Affiliations Batch Data Entry If all of the Apps are installed, they provide baseline functionality for nonprofit fundraising. The individual Apps are updated periodically via two different approaches. Primarily, the Foundation relies on independent software vendors to provide plug-in functionality and implementation consulting. This model was intentionally chosen by the Foundation to keep the App s footprint small and light, though it has ramifications for App support. In addition, the Foundation organizes two development sprints per year for Salesforce.com developers to focus on collaborative improvements to functionality. Data Model and Functionality One of the key differentiators of As we mentioned in the introduction to the Salesforce.com platform, many fundraising Apps dictate the Account Model that a nonprofit must use. One of the key differentiators of NPSP is the ability to choose an account model that best suits your needs. The NPSP provides two distinct options for tracking individuals that do not necessarily have a company affiliation: Bucket Account Model and 1 to 1 Account Model. The Bucket Account Model automatically assigns individuals to a bucket account called Individual. In the 1 to 1 Account Model, each Contact is automatically assigned to its own Account, which has the same name as the Contact and is not directly visible to the end user. 23

24 Diagram courtesy of Salesforce.com Foundation The NPSP provides two distinct options for tracking individuals that do not necessarily have a company affiliation: 1 to 1 Account Model and Bucket Account Model. Each methodology has its own considerations, primarily around reporting, security, and data storage. Once a nonprofit selects a model, it can be changed, but keeping data usable requires a data migration. This is a key pre-implementation decision for nonprofits that select the NPSP. Demographic The NPSP introduces a Household Object in Salesforce.com to help nonprofits address needs for mailing multiple people in the same household. The NPSP Household Object helps to pull together the mailing address and giving summaries of individuals joined with it. The giving summaries are recalculated automatically on a nightly basis, and can be initiated manually as well if needed. The NPSP includes some useful fields for capturing demographic data and for viewing giving summaries. The giving summaries are customizable by date and by the criteria that are used, and are quite comprehensive, including many totals that nonprofits need to use on a daily basis. One particularly nice feature of Household roll-ups is the ability to customize which gift types are included or excluded (such as purchases, event tickets, or memberships). On the demographic side, an effective implementation will require a good amount of thought and configuration to be fully usable, particularly for mid-size or larger nonprofits that may track a greater level of detail than the package supports out of the box. Also, for better and worse, it is very easy to change an address for all members of a Household at once, though it would be nice to have some additional automation here, particularly when performing batch updates. 24

25 Relationship management is addressed in the NPSP, though it is a bit fractured in terms of both record management and visual appeal, and the terminology takes some getting used to. The Relationships object adds the ability to track relationships between Contacts, and the Affiliations Object adds the ability to track relationships between Contacts and Organizations (native Accounts). The NPSP suggests using the native Salesforce.com Partner object to track relationships between organizations. Overall, the information you need can be captured, which makes it functional for most nonprofits. A nice-to-have would be a visual representation of all relationships, which is planned for release in Financial The NPSP uses the native Salesforce.com Opportunity Object as well as an object called Payments, which is designed to separate revenue from cash received. If a nonprofit wishes to track a proposal, it would create an Opportunity record, and if the proposal is successful, the cash would be added to the Opportunity as associated Payments. Payments are also helpful because they allow an organization to track payments against pledges, and they support the ability to write off rescinded payments and generate reminders for payments due. The NPSP has also included Payment roll-up fields to show the number of payments per Opportunity as well as the remaining balance. Another area worth consideration is Recurring Donations. This functionality is primarily used to track open-ended commitments, although there is also a way to track pledges. There are some subtleties in learning how to enter them correctly, but this can be addressed in training. The functionality seems fairly strong, particularly with the inclusion of the Payments object. One strength of the Nonprofit Starter Pack is how well it handles multiple currencies. Nonprofits who operate internationally should keep this in mind when reviewing Apps. Ease of Basic Processes Data entry in the NPSP can be relatively easy if the nonprofit doesn t have sophisticated tracking needs, and there is a lot of flexibility for building custom procedures for an organization with some budget and/or time for development and administration. On the flip side, because little is enforced through functionality (e.g., user prompts, batch record entry, etc.), it necessitates development of thorough end-user documentation to ensure consistency in data entry and record management, even for seemingly simple procedures such as adding a spouse record, changing a household address and deceasing a constituent. A full suite of control reports should also be developed to analyze proper system usage. The Batch Data Entry package is unique and very useful because it can be used for more than gifts other types of information, including data in custom objects, can be batched. 25

26 The bottom line on Nonprofit starter pack This is a collection of Apps that is updated regularly and is supported by the Foundation, though nonprofits should be aware that day-to-day user support in terms of a help line or dedicated support is limited due to the patchwork of developers who have created the NPSP. This can be frustrating when encountering an issue. Additionally, functionality such as volunteer management, events management, and split gifts are not included, which means that a nonprofit must seek alternatives on the AppExchange. The offerings from Groundwire and Cloud4Good to handle these are very robust and should be considered in any NPSP implementation. While functionality can be good, it will require greater support from within the organization when troubleshooting. Overall, NPSP does provide a great baseline for fundraising functionality, and it would be a good option for the following situations: Smaller nonprofits with simple fundraising tracking needs Nonprofits that frequently handle multiple currencies Nonprofits with low record volumes Nonprofits needing a lightweight fundraising application in addition to other non-fundraising Salesforce.com customization and configuration Nonprofits of any size seeking a mission-only deployment, or needing a free and simple way of managing individuals that is compatible with most AppExchange applications Nonprofits with a large budget for customizations Nonprofits not requiring a Salesforce.com App that strictly enforces fundraising best practice processes 26