Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud: A Complete Guide

Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) is a purpose-built CRM solution designed for nonprofits, allowing them to unify all critical functions into a single system. 

These critical functions include donor management (fundraising, engagement), program delivery (case management, service tracking, outcome measurement), and operations (grant management, compliance reporting).  

NPC is a successor to Salesforce’s Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), which served as the go-to CRM for nonprofits for over a decade. 

Why Nonprofit Cloud? 

Nonprofits are familiar with Salesforce’s earlier solution, Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), a free, open-source data model built on Salesforce’s core platform, providing basic donor management features such as contact tracking and household accounts. 

What are the limitations of the NPSP? 

With the offering of NPSP, nonprofits are required to:

• Customize or buy add-ons for grants, volunteer, and program tracking.
• Manually manage complex processes like outcome reporting and donor analysis. 

While NPSP was revolutionary, nonprofits faced limitations such as:

• Growing data complexity, like donors expecting personalized engagement. 
• Funding shifts, e.g., grantmakers now demand outcome proof.
• Increased security risks (68% of nonprofits experienced a data breach in the past three years, according to the CyberPeace Analytical report).

How does Nonprofit Cloud differ from NPSP?

Salesforce created Nonprofit Cloud to address NPSP’s scalability and innovation gaps while meeting modern nonprofit demands.    

From disjointed systems to unified operations

The NPSP’s core limitation was its modular design, as it could only handle basic donor management; nonprofits had to buy add-ons for grants and volunteers. 

Nonprofit Cloud eliminates this fragmentation and the need for add-ons by providing native, integrated tools for volunteer tracking, grants management, and program tracking, all within a platform. 

From manual processes to AI-driven automation 

With NPSP, nonprofits had to manually analyze donor trends (like guessing who might lapse based on spreadsheet filters), manually manage grants reporting, causing compliance risks, and create custom reports, which requires expertise.  

NPC replaces this with Einstein AI, which predicts donor behavior and at-risk donors. The system auto-generates compliance reports with one-click export. 

From complex setup to intuitive 

While NPSP’s open-source data model offered free installation, it lacked nonprofit-specific default features. It requires customization to set up grant management and donor tracking, which adds to the budget. 

The Nonprofit Cloud comes with donor tracking, grant management, pre-configured templates for food banks and education nonprofits, and a guided setup to reduce implementation time.

NPC vs NPSC: Key Differences:

In short, Nonprofit Cloud is the next-gen upgrade that not only addresses the challenges organizations face with NPSP but introduces a unified, intelligent solution helping nonprofits to stay compliant with growing market conditions. 

Key features of Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud 

Fundraising tools

Salesforce NPC’s fundraising tools transform scattered donor data into actionable insights by creating unified profiles that track every interaction from donation history to communication preferences. The system’s AI analyzes these patterns to identify at-risk donors, highlight growth opportunities, and automatically send alerts when key supporters need attention. It also replaces the manual spreadsheet tracking with intelligent insight to help you with the best opportunities to grow support.       

Real-world example: Pacific Clinics, California’s largest behavioral health nonprofit, faced significant challenges with siloed donor data, requiring staff to manually re-enter information while maintaining privacy and security. 

After implementing Nonprofit Cloud, they automated data consolidation through NPC’s built-in healthcare templates, eliminating 175 hours of monthly manual work. Their staff can now serve 500 additional clients without additional resources. 

Program Management 

NPC’s Program Management tools track every participant’s interactions from workshop attendance and case manager meetings to follow-up surveys. This system correlates these touchpoints with the real-world results of the program. Its built-in AI analyzes your data to show which services create the most change, while its one-click reporting helps you showcase the numbers to funders about how their support created change. 

For example, it unifies all interactions, like when a student attends the workshop, their grades before/after, mentor feedback, and the pattern reveals that students attending (x number) sessions help them improve grades by 35%. 

Real-world example: Big Brother Big Sister of America (BBBSA), matching volunteers with children in need of mentorship and providing one-on-one guidance, has faced critical challenges of increasing wait time to match children with compatible volunteers and data silos restrict them to prove program outcomes to funders. 

By implementing NPC, Agentforce-powered matching analyzes volunteer-child compatibility factors, cutting wait times for manually reviewing applications. With the unified case management and automated journeys, their staff has been able to save 20 hours monthly, which volunteers spend on background checks. 

Marketing and Engagement

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud’s Marketing & Engagement Hub transforms generic campaigns into targeted engagement strategies by segmenting scattered donor data. The system automatically organizes supporters based on their donation history, communication preferences, and shown interests (e.g., education vs health causes). Built-in AI then recommends the optimal channels and messages for each donor segment, while Omnichannel Journey Builder executes personalized touchpoints across email, SMS, and social media, all from a single platform.

Real-world example: Make-A-Wish Foundation grants an average of 15,000 wishes annually to children battling against critical illnesses. They have scattered data across 58 channels, which they were able to centralize onto one platform with NPC’s premier success plan to increase financial transparency. They previously sent a thank-you message manually to donors after receiving gifts. Now, they can automatically send personalized messages after every contribution. 

IT Operations

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud provides enterprise-grade infrastructure, pre-built templates, and low complexity implementation. Its HIPAA-ready data models ensure sensitive client information stays protected, and up to 99.99% uptime SLAs ensure services are not interrupted during critical campaigns. 

Grantmaking

Salesforce NPC’s Grantmaking suite streamlines workflows by creating dynamic proposals, tracking budgets in real time, and generating compliance-ready reports. Its AI suggests personalized proposal content for grant seekers. With Grantseeker Portal’s pre-built templates, you can set up branded portals with a few clicks to seek funding opportunities. 

Real-world example: Year Up United, a nonprofit organization, provides economic opportunities and education to young adults and serves students across 30+ campuses. They want to serve 10x more students by 2030, which requires efficiency at scale. Salesforce platform helps them develop a better internship matching process to boost efficiency by 45%, while saving 4.5K hours yearly. 

NonProfit Cloud Pricing 

Salesforce offers flexible pricing for nonprofit organizations. Here’s a detailed breakdown of Nonprofit cloud pricing:

Core Plans

Enterprise: The Nonprofit Cloud’s pricing starts from $60/user/month, ideal for small orgs, and includes features of: 

• Case Management
• Program Management
• Nonprofit Copilot Action (Basic AI Assistance)

Unlimited: NPC pricing for the Unlimited Edition starts from $100/user/month, ideal for scaling businesses, includes everything in the Enterprise Edition, plus: 

• Premier Success Plan
• Full Sandbox for testing 
• 24/7 free support       

Einstein 1 for Sales: Its pricing starts from $300/user/month, includes everything in Unlimited Edition, plus: 

• Slack Enterprise Grid integration
• Sales Planning 
• Revenue Intelligence 

Einstein 1 for Service: The pricing starts from $300/user/month, includes everything in Unlimited Edition, plus:

• Digital engagement tools
• Service Cloud Voice (AI Case Routing)
• Einstein Conversation insights 

Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking

Salesforce NPC offers plans for grantmakers and provides them with the ability to create grantseekers and grantee portals to share funding opportunities. 

Grantmaking Enterprise Edition: The monthly pricing starts from $175/user, including all features in Nonprofit Cloud, plus: 

• Application management, 
• Budget management

Grantmaking Unlimited Edition: Its monthly pricing starts from $225/user, includes everything in Enterprise Edition, plus:

• Extra storage 
• Premier success plan 
• Full sandbox 

Note: As Salesforce is a part of the Power of US Programs, qualified nonprofits will get 10 free licenses of Nonprofit Cloud Enterprise Edition. 

Conclusion 

If your nonprofit struggles with inefficiencies, disjointed systems, Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud will be more than an upgrade for you. It is a complete transformation of how technology empowers your mission to create change. 
NPC frees your team by automating manual work and leveraging AI, and helps them focus on the most critical tasks. We at Cyntexa offer Salesforce implementation services to implement this platform and empower you to streamline operations. 

AUTHOR

Vishwajeet Srivastava

Salesforce Data Cloud, AI Products, ServiceNow, Product Engineering

Co-founder and CTO at Cyntexa also known as “VJ”. With 10+ years of experience and 22+ Salesforce certifications, he’s a seasoned expert in Salesforce Data Cloud & AI Products, Product Engineering, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, ServiceNow, and Managed Services. Known for blending strategic thinking with hands-on expertise, VJ is passionate about building scalable solutions that drive innovation, operational efficiency, and enterprise-wide transformation.