<![CDATA[Meredith Curry Consulting - Mer\'s Blog]]>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 03:06:13 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[The Nonprofit Starter Pack vs. Enterprise Edition]]>Wed, 05 Nov 2014 02:03:37 GMThttp://www.meredithcurry.com/mers-blog/the-nonprofit-starter-pack-vs-enterprise-editionI've met with and worked with nonprofits interested in using Salesforce or already using Salesforce who wonder what the difference is between these two editions.

In an effort to help current and future nonprofit organizations make better decisions around the Salesforce edition to apply for and implement, this blog will:

1. Compare the two editions side by side, as they relate to nonprofit management.
2. Discuss the pros and cons of each edition based on nonprofit use case scenarios.

If you'd like to read more about the differences:
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When you first visit the Salesforce Foundation's website, if you decide you would like to check out a 30-day trial, you are directed to the page, http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/start-trial/. When you sign up for the free trial, the first question is which edition you would like to try (image on the right).
Unfortunately, most nonprofit staff that initiate the trial process are not familiar enough with the differences between the edition options to make an educated decision. When faced with "Pre-configured for donor management" and "Clean slate," they will often choose "donor management" because it sounds most relevant. And oftentimes, because they have already practiced with the nonprofit starter pack, they will keep it after being granted the donated licenses by the Foundation. Perhaps the nonprofit starter pack is what the nonprofit needs. But perhaps it isn't.

Salesforce Enterprise Edition - The "Clean Slate" 

Salesforce enterprise edition is built for sales organizations. It's primary standard objects, relevant to nonprofits, are Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Campaigns, and Opportunities. For organizations that may sell products as part of their business model, enterprise also comes with Orders, Products, and Price Books.
To the left is a workflow that most resembles how nonprofit organizations can use the Contacts and Accounts objects in Salesforce. 

Accounts are used to represent organizations. Contacts are connected to each other with an Account. For example, the employees of a business. A nonprofit can also use it to represent cohorts (e.g. 2012 Students) or groups of individuals (e.g. Donors, Volunteers). Accounts can stand alone without having any Contacts connected to it, such as a Foundation (although in most cases, even a Foundation has a Grant Manager).
Contacts are used to represent the organization's constituents (e.g. students, donors). Contacts are required to be connected to an Account. Contact records have standard functionality, such as mass email (text and html), campaign membership, opportunities (such as donations), and cases (customer service issues).

Leads are used to represent people that have the potential to be constituents, but have no affiliation to the organization yet. Once a lead becomes a constituent, with one click, leads can be converted to Contacts. Even as leads, these records have the same functionality as Contacts (e.g. mass email, campaign membership). 

Contacts and Leads, however, are two completely different sets of records, even though they both represent "people." They require different reports, different email lists and views, etc. My next blog will be a deeper dive into the difference between Contacts and Leads as they pertain to nonprofits.

Opportunities represent revenues, such as donations. For nonprofits, you can track individual donations, foundation grants, in-kind contributions, ticket sales, etc. 

Campaigns can represent events or mass emails. For sales organizations, they represent an attempt at getting business. Nonprofits can use this to record fundraisers, annual donation requests by mail or email, or meetings. Campaigns can have a "sales/opportunities" goal, therefore opportunities can be linked to both a Contact/Account and a campaign (see image below). 
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Orders, Products and Price Books can be used for organizations that sell goods or services. Even if a profit is not made, it can represent the process of constituents requesting supplies. At my organization, CCGI, counselors can request free bookmarks and posters. We use Orders, Products, and Price Books to represent the request and the fulfillment of the request.

Pros for Enterprise

Cons for Enterprise
  • It is definitely a "clean slate." You can delete, edit, rename objects and fields. You can create all the custom objects and fields you need to track your mission.
  • All objects and fields are available for revision. Nothing is locked.
  • Contacts and Accounts are separate. You can manage people as Contacts and Accounts as Organizations. This edition operates off of contact-to-organization relationships.
  • You will need to work with someone to better understand how the current objects/fields can be translated to your organization's needs and terminology. If you do not have a Salesforce Administrator, you will need to train one and/or hire a consultant.
  • While your licenses are free, you will need to pay for a consultant to customize your edition to suit your needs.

Nonprofit Starter Pack - "Pre-configured"

In addition to all the standard objects that enterprise edition has, the Nonprofit Starter pack comes with pre-installed packages that can be useful for nonprofits. These include:

  1. Contacts and Organizations package to manage contact-to-contact relationships.
  2. Household package to connect people who live in the same household in order to manage one address for the household.
  3. Recurring Donations package to track donations pledged over time.
  4. Relationships package to manage relationships between people such as family or co-worker.
  5. Affiliations package to track affiliations to organizations.

See image below.
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Pros for Nonprofit Starter Pack

Cons for Nonprofit Starter Pack
  • The Nonprofit Starter pack comes with packages that make sense for fundraising management.
  • Out-of-the box contact-to-contact relationships helps you connect people to each other and manage opportunities for households.
  • For fundraising management, the starter pack is ready to go without the assistance of an Administrator.
  • Some objects and packages are locked and cannot be configured.
  • Contact-to-contact relationships make it more difficult to track contacts as individuals (e.g. a student separate from the family).
  • It is easier to migrate all of your data to a new Enterprise edition than to break up the packages in the Starter Pack. But this is costly and time-consuming.

Use Case Scenarios

Use of Salesforce for Fundraising Management only

Suggestion: Nonprofit Starter Pack
  • The focus is to relate donations to the donors. It is possible that donations can come from more than one person in a household.
  • A roll-up summary of donations given over time is included.

Note: If Person Accounts is turned on, then you will have to connect donations to the Account and campaign membership to the Contact. If this can be an issue, then Person Accounts should not be turned on, or disabled. 

Use of Salesforce for Student Tracking in addition to Fundraising Management

Suggestion: Enterprise Edition
  • Because students are a primary constituent group, the focus is not on donors. Donors can be a secondary or tertiary constituent group.
  • Custom objects can be built to track programs the student participates in. Some organizations will create a separate object to identify students as participants vs. non-participants (e.g. Scholars). 
  • The use of Contact record types and other custom fields (e.g. Contact Type, Role Tags) can be used to define a person's affiliations (e.g. Student + Alumni Donor + Volunteer).

Use of Salesforce for Student Tracking that include includes Household and Fundraising Management

Suggestion: Enterprise Edition
  • Because students are a primary constituent group, the focus is not on donors. Parents may be the secondary constituent group. Connections can be built between two different Contact record types using look-up fields.
  • A custom Household object can be manually built to track the connections between students (or multiple students) and their parents. Useful in situation where the students are minors (K-12) and the parents' address is used as the student's address. Another option is to use look-up fields to parents (primary and secondary) and then formula fields connected to the primary parent to pull the appropriate address into the student's record.

If you have any questions...

Please send me an email! Happy to help you think through the most appropriate edition and build-out for your organization. I am willing to give up to 2 hours of free consultation via phone or email, which includes a review of your current data.
]]><![CDATA[A review of AppExchange's free applications]]>Sun, 26 Oct 2014 17:07:36 GMThttp://www.meredithcurry.com/mers-blog/a-review-of-appexchanges-free-applicationsPictureClick this image to download the Menu!
This month, I decided to devote some time to review the 1,000 free apps currently available on the Salesforce AppExchange. As you can imagine, a majority of those apps, I didn't find as useful or relevant when thinking about how they might provide efficiencies to nonprofit Salesforce users. Many of them are specific to vendors and sales companies. 

Fortunately, I  was able to find 31 apps that could be very helpful for nonprofits currently using Salesforce for their data management and tracking needs. To highlight these apps, I've created an AppExchange Menu and am sharing it with all the Salesforce users I know!

These apps are organized into the following categories:

  • General Productivity
  • Communications
  • Student (and Parent) Management
  • Volunteer Management
  • Donor/Fundraising Management
  • Event Management
  • Miscellaneous

I hope that you find the guide helpful! If you have any questions about any of the apps, let me know. I have had the chance to install many of these packages already throughout the various Salesforce orgs that I manage.
Click here for the AppExchange Menu!
]]><![CDATA[ Why cloud-based software is a necessity in the nonprofit sector]]>Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:36:11 GMThttp://www.meredithcurry.com/mers-blog/-why-cloud-based-software-is-a-necessity-in-the-nonprofit-sectorWritten by Michael Cochran, Communityforce.com

I wanted to repost this article as it speaks to why I am always referring nonprofits to Salesforce and the benefits to cloud-based software for everything from student tracking to grants management. Here's a small snippet followed by the link to the full article!

"The rise in cloud computing has been great for the nonprofit sector. Cloud-based technology makes it easier for foundations, associations and other organizations to improve all sorts of internal processes like grant management or donation management. What you may not know, however, are some of the additional benefits of how moving certain procedures to the cloud could make your organization better."


Read the full article at:
http://www.communityforce.com/why-cloud-based-software-is-a-necessity-in-the-nonprofit-sector-2/
]]><![CDATA[App Highlight: FormAssembly]]>Fri, 28 Mar 2014 16:28:00 GMThttp://www.meredithcurry.com/mers-blog/app-highlight-formassemblyI have used FormAssembly with two organizations now, both South Central Scholars and the California College Guidance Initiative. I've also referred it to three of my clients, one of which is currently using it. Here are the benefits of FormAssembly:

1) A Professional account ($39/mo.) comes with 3rd party integrations. That means that you can set up your online forms to map back to Salesforce and Google Docs spreadsheets. There's some other cool capabilities that I haven't tried, like creating PDFs with WebMerge and publishing forms with WordPress.
2) All accounts, including the free Starter account, have unlimited forms, online reports and charts, and email notifications to you about responses. 
3) Any plan other than Starter allows you to brand your forms with your own logo. There are lots of options for customizing the look and feel of your forms too with themes.
4) Any plan other than Starter allows respondents to attach files to their form submissions.
5) Professional and Enterprise accounts also allow payments with PayPal and FreshBooks.

What does that mean for you and your program? Here is how I've seen FormAssembly used by nonprofits:

- Survey or evaluation
- Program application (e.g. after-school program, scholarship, mentorship)
- Reports (e.g. mentor report, workshop attendance on-site)

If you have Salesforce, you can map entries from your form into Contacts, Leads, Accounts, as well as custom objects. That means you can put the onus of updating information directly into the hands of your clients (i.e. students, schools). 

How might you use this? 
Create a contact information update form (school, address, email, job, etc.), send it to all of your students, and watch their responses update their contact information in Salesforce. No double-entry or copy-and-pasting their responses from a Google spreadsheet into Salesforce!

How might you use file attachments?
Create a check-in form that asks students to upload critical files, such as resumes, transcripts, or financial aid awards. Watch their responses update their contact information AND create an Attachment linked to their contact record in Salesforce! No more saving email attachments to your desktop just to upload it into Salesforce for numerous contacts!

Wondering if FormAssembly can fill a need that you have? Contact me!

Click here to find FormAssembly on the appexchange!
Click here to go directly to FormAssembly's website!]]><![CDATA[Advice on when to go get an MBA]]>Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:41:23 GMThttp://www.meredithcurry.com/mers-blog/advice-on-when-to-go-get-an-mbaA colleague at UCLA referred a CSULB student to me looking for advice on when he should go get his MBA. He's a third year majoring in business considering taking a few years off.

Long story short, I agreed with his initial thoughts on waiting a few years to work first. But here's the longer version of the advice I gave him, in case it can be helpful to students or alums that you work with.

"There are a couple questions you should ask YOURSELF as you make this decision:
1) Why should I or shouldn't I go right after I graduate from college?

  • For most of my students, they think they have to go straight because parents or other influencers are telling them too.
  • It may be easier to go straight to grad school full time after college, your loans are already deferred, you can include your living costs and not have to work, etc.
  • Keep in mind also that depending on the degree, such as an MBA, most strong programs may prefer/require a few years of full-time work experience. Meaning that if there are specific programs you want to apply to, it may not be a good fit for you to apply and go now. 
2) If I waited and worked first, what's the most amount of time I would put between graduating and going back to school?

  • If you went to work first, do you think that you could find a job that you could stick with for maybe 2-3 years before going to school? Or maybe 3-5 years?
  • Do you feel that you could find a job that would get you tuition reimbursement, because if so, that's a great resource so you might want to wait and remove that added financial burden.

3) If I waited, what kind of factors or challenges later on might keep me from actually going back?

  • This is an honest question you have to ask yourself. For instance, I don't know what your situation is, but if you have a girlfriend that you think you might want to marry in the next 5 years, then you should probably go back to school BEFORE then so that it doesn't become a challenge, both in terms of time and responsibilities, but also MONEY.
  • Or, do you have parents that are much older that you may have to take care of at some point? Because doing that while working and going to school can be very challenging. Not impossible. But challenging.

4) What kind of program could I afford to do if I went straight from college versus waiting?

  • I could not afford to not work so I had to do a part time program while working full time. What is your situation?
  • Could you afford to maybe not work for one year and then do a full-time accelerated program? 

5) What kind of program do I WANT to do?

So your choices for a straight MBA are pretty much:

  1.     Full-time, normally 2 years
  2.     Full-time - accelerated, 1 year
  3.     Part-time - weekends or cohort model, normally 2 years
  4.     Part-time - executive, can be 2-3 years (most people i know that do this take 3 years)

6) Do I want to do a strict MBA? Is an MBA the right thing for what I see myself doing not just now, but later?

BUT, there are also joint MBA programs (how I wish I had looked into these…):

Columbia

  • MBA & MS Engineering/Applied Science
  • MBA & MS Journalism
  • MBA & MIA Public Affairs
  • MBA & MPH Public Health
  • MBA & MS Social Work

USC

  • MBA & MA East Asian Area Studies
  • MBA & MPI Planning
  • MBA & M Real Estate Development
  • MBA & Ed.D. Doctor of Education

Stanford

  • MBA & MPP Public Policy

And these are just a FEW of the examples.

Basically what I'm saying is, are you 100% clear on WHERE in business you want to end up? Because an MBA is just going to teach you a little bit about a lot of different things. You're not going to learn enough HR to become a manager off the bat and feel confident, unless you did an emphasis in it. But dual degree programs, or work experience, can help you figure it out so that when you DO go back to school, you know that it's going to get you where you want to go."


Please note this reflects my own opinion, based on my own experiences, and my reflections of the experiences shared with me by others.
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