Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) uses several objects in addition to Opportunities to track gifts pledged and given, receipt of those gifts, designations, and influence for donations. These include:
- Gift Commitments
- Gift Transactions
- Gift Designations
- Gift Soft Credits
- Gift Refunds
- Donor Gift Summaries
- Gift Batches
Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) relied on Opportunity to track every kind of revenue, whether received or pledged. NPC separates these types of donations in its data model.
Reporting on received vs. projected is more straightforward, but getting a complete financial picture means accounting for multiple objects.
Another consideration is that you could run into the “where is my data?” issue or have the extra mental overhead of where to track what kind of donations and when.
Defining a clear process and expectations and leveraging Salesforce features to make the user experience easier can help alleviate those mental gymnastics.
NPC’s fundraising objects can serve the right organization and help make reporting and planning easier, but the data model may be too complex for others.
Why Not Opportunities?
While NPSP tracked gifts using only the Opportunity object, it hasn’t gone away in NPC! Understanding received, projected, and pursuing revenue will help distinguish when to use what object.
NPC intends that Opportunities represent gifts that staff are actively working to land, especially grant funds or other significant donations. If you’re familiar with the lead/contact distinction, you can consider Opportunities as the “lead” of your revenue process.
Your organization has defined a clear objective (such as a $10,000 grant award or a $5,000 donation to a gala) and is actively cultivating relationships with the donor to receive that donation.
Once someone commits to giving (but hasn’t given yet), that Opportunity would turn into a Gift Commitment, then a Gift Transaction(s) is entered once your organization receives the donation.
A Closed/Won Opportunity isn’t a donation in Nonprofit Cloud - it means that the specific source being pursued either has a Gift Commitment or a Gift Transaction. Your team should be on the same page as to what should happen when an Opportunity is Closed/Won.
Using Opportunities allows staff to focus on intentionally pursuing larger donations or sources of revenue and gives a clear view of the pipeline in the works versus received or promised upcoming gifts.
NPC Fundraising Objects
NPC's Fundraising Data Model
Gift Commitments
A donor’s committed (but not yet received) funds. These can be commitments from a person or organization and related to a campaign or schedule. Commitments can be time-based or open-ended (defined by the Gift Commitment Schedule).
Also indicates how the commitment will be fulfilled if applicable, such as a trust, insurance, or other annuity/fund.
Gift Transactions
A received donation and payment information, or what would have been a Closed/Won Opportunity in NPSP. These can be optionally related to a specific campaign, gift commitment, and gift commitment schedule.
A gift transaction can be related to a matching employer gift outside of using soft credits.
Gift Designations
A specific category that donors can indicate they want their donation to go towards. Gift Designation records include several valuable rollup metrics, such as total transaction amount, current year amount, and last year amount.
Gift Designations are not the same as Campaigns. Campaigns represent a concerted effort to influence a group of people in some way. This could be marketing-related and usually is, but it doesn’t have to be (for example, recruiting).
Gift Designations tell your organization what the donation should go towards. This could be the same thing as a Campaign or a subcategory and may be accounting-related.
A Campaign may be a hunger drive, while a donor could specify that their gift be used for administrative overhead or leadership development.
Gift Refunds
While we’d love never needing this, Gift Refunds represent both partial and complete refunds of donations.
Entering a Gift Refund adjusts the Current Amount and Refunded Amount on its related Gift Transaction.
Salesforce automatically updates the Gift Transaction’s status to Fully Refunded if the Gift Refund is for the full amount.
Gift Soft Credits
Like NPSP, soft credits indicate that a person or an organization has influenced a donation. They didn’t give that particular donation directly, but they played a part in making it happen.
For example, if a company donates to your organization because of a board member, the board member would receive a soft credit.
As in NPSP, soft credits are very flexible. Soft credits can be either a percentage or dollar amount, and like NPSP, the totals for a donation can exceed the original donation amount.
One important limitation - soft credits can only relate to Accounts out of the box, including Person Accounts. If a Contact isn’t a Person Account, additional configuration will be needed.
Donor Gift Summaries
In NPSP, opportunity rollups were on the Account/Household or Contact record. NPC moves these amounts to Donor Gift Summaries.
Donor Gift Summaries alone do not report on totals for a specific group of people (eg, household) but offer all the metrics in NPSP.
Donor Gift Summaries offer an additional scoring feature to grade or categorize donors on donation recency, funds, and frequency.
Gift Batches
Gift Batches are NPC’s version of NPSP’s Gift Entry. Gift Batches allows you to enter gifts all at once and rely on Salesforce to process them into their respective records:
- Gift Transaction
- Gift Designation
- Soft Credit
- Accounts/Contacts/Person Accounts
Gift Batches processes and shows the details and status of the entered gift batch. Like NPSP, you can perform a dry run to catch and resolve any errors or discrepancies before processing the gifts.
Implementing Fundraising
Nonprofit Cloud's fundraising data model represents a significant shift from NPSP's opportunity-focused approach
By separating donations into distinct objects—Gift Commitments, Gift Transactions, Gift Designations, and others—NPC offers greater precision in tracking and reporting.
This architecture provides a clearer distinction between received and projected revenue but requires users to navigate multiple objects to get a complete financial picture.
The key to success with NPC lies in thoughtful implementation. Organizations should establish well-defined processes for when to use Opportunities versus Gift Commitments, create clear user guidelines, and leverage Salesforce's customization capabilities to streamline the experience.
While the more complex data model might feel overwhelming initially, the potential benefits in reporting accuracy and fundraising strategy can make it worthwhile for many nonprofits.
Ultimately, your organization's specific needs and capacity will determine whether NPC's sophisticated fundraising objects are the right fit.
Organizations with complex fundraising operations and dedicated Salesforce administrators may find tremendous value in the granular control NPC provides, while smaller teams might prefer NPSP's more straightforward approach.
Either way, understanding these fundamental differences will help you make an informed decision about your Salesforce nonprofit solution.