The Nonprofit Starter Pack vs. Enterprise Edition

I'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:

• Click here for Cloud for Good's article
  
• Click here for the Salesforce Developers article

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).

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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). 

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.

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.