Episode 7 Transcript:

Scott Billows (00:01.834)
All right, Matt, another episode, episode seven. And this one we're releasing on July 31st and here we are, middle of the summer and lots going on. So we've got an interesting pod to talk about, or I guess a pod topic to cover here today. And excited to dive into this with you. the topic,

Matt Hui (00:04.226)
Thank

Scott Billows (00:31.729)
we've been noodling on and talking about internally and one that certainly you're seeing a lot of our customers asking us for is a product that Salesforce released called Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud. Now this thing's been out for a couple of years, it's kind of all the craze with our nonprofit customers. And we thought today would be a good time to sort of unpack.

the story of nonprofit, the journey Salesforce has been on with nonprofit and give some input into what we're seeing with nonprofit cloud. So why don't we kick it off here with just talking a little bit about the history of Salesforce and what they've done in terms of, I guess, their commitment to the nonprofit community. And so,

I guess we've been in this Salesforce ecosystem for so long now, it just feels like this is just part of what every company does, but I think it's pretty unique in terms of what Salesforce did when they originally founded the company. you want to, maybe you want to double click on that and give some background in terms of what Salesforce did and sort of what that journey looks like.

Matt Hui (01:51.692)
Yeah, absolutely, and I think the timing of this, Scott, is perfect. mean, the amount of times I've been asked over the last six to 12 months of what is Nonprofit Cloud and should I be moving, I we can talk about that, but I think the timing of this episode is perfect, and I think a lot of people will get a lot of just, they're at this inflection point. They've either...

made an investment and should they upgrade that investment? Or they're starting fresh and they're wondering where's the starting point? So maybe we'll do a bit of history here and to find a couple key terms here. So in Salesforce, they're nonprofit offering historically and even.

but way back there's something called NPSP and we'll often refer to NPSP. That stands for Nonprofit Success Pack. And this was a collection or an app that Salesforce had put out their product offering that had integrated opinions, inputs, working sessions from all of these nonprofit users to develop this kind of purpose-built solution on the Salesforce platform.

So that's a non-profit success pack and that has been the bread and butter for many, many years in which, I know you alluded to it, March.

Last year, March 2023, a nonprofit cloud actually got released. And this was a pretty disruptive but pretty game-changing product offering. And Salesforce, we've been around long enough to know that Salesforce always comes out with new products, innovative ideas. They hear something and they want to solve that thing. They want to productize it to try to make it as easy as possible for somebody starting from scratch. But nonprofit cloud was...

Matt Hui (03:32.12)
was really interesting because at the time of it being rolled out, there was a lot of shake up within their industries and they had consolidated a lot of the product offering into this nonprofit cloud which was built on the same underlying foundation as a lot of other kind of industry specific tools. So the crossover became easier. But fast forward to today, nonprofit cloud has had many releases to date to kind of sharpen its product. It's got things that solve out of

like program management. This is now out of the box. You don't need to install anything. You don't need a third party application. You don't need to build things. There's a lot of out of the box capabilities there. Out of the box capabilities for volunteer management. That's actually brand new as of three weeks ago. So they're just this constant evolution of their...

Scott Billows (04:08.647)
.

Scott Billows (04:22.348)
Yeah.

Matt Hui (04:23.636)
flagship product. And I think that's good way to look at it's flagship product. You look at a phone company, they're always gonna have their flagship product. And at some point, they will pour all of their R &D efforts into that new product. some questions I'd love for us to unpack today, Scott, is, well, what should I think about? When should I move in?

If I'm already on NPSP, what should I be thinking about when I'm moving to nonprofit cloud? So wondering if you can kind of expand on that.

Scott Billows (04:52.011)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe just before we get into that, I think it's maybe just to provide a bit of context in terms of the history. So when Salesforce was founded, they created this model, they created essentially a 501C3. At the same time, they founded their company.

And Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, he talks a lot about this in terms of just they had zero value in terms of sort of market value as a company. They had very little technology. They had very few people. And so they started this revolution around, let's create a 501c3 when we spin up a new company. at the point Salesforce went public, obviously that non-profit or 501c3 became

a very high value organization based on the equity price that Salesforce was trading at when they went public. so Salesforce has their roots in non-profit and what they've done is they've gone out and they've, over the years, they've enabled non-profit or charities to benefit from their technology. And as you introduced, they started with NPSP, which sat on top of

their sales or surface cloud offering. But I think what's pretty interesting is, and what we've seen happen in the market over the last handful of years is, Salesforce have really verticalized on very industry specific technology. And as their platform and as their technology has evolved, they have gone and rebuilt certain capabilities on their core

platform compared to maybe how they had it in the past. So if we contrast NPSP to a nonprofit cloud, NPSP, as you had mentioned, was the collection, the of the ideas of the community. And there were packages that were built that could plug in or sit on top of a core Salesforce license. what they've done in the last number of years and what was released March of 23 is an actual

Scott Billows (07:17.614)
a vertical product that was designed specifically for the nonprofit community. I think some of the benefits that we're seeing, and we can get into talking about customers that are already using Salesforce, maybe they're on a sales cloud or service cloud, maybe they've adopted nonprofit or NPSP rather, should they consider an NPC going forward. But maybe just.

click on a couple of these sort of benefits that exist with, I guess what we call the core integration or architecture. So nonprofit cloud built on the platform and what that means to a customer is if you adopt that as your Salesforce cloud or as the product that you purchase from Salesforce,

you are going to be in a position on a go-forward basis that every time they make updates, that is going to benefit your organization. this has been a, since the inception of Salesforce, has been, I know their theme is releases on a regular basis so that you're constantly receiving the latest and greatest in terms of their technology. I guess in terms of, we can talk a little bit about sort of this

You know, I'm in one of three categories. I'm either looking at Salesforce for the first time. Number two is I've been on Salesforce in the past, you know, maybe at another organization and I'm trying to get the organization that I'm in, kind of to move in that direction. And then, and the third would be I have Salesforce, but I'm not on nonprofit cloud.

How do I evaluate and think about that? what are your thoughts on, guess, maybe why don't we pick the latter one? Because we've got customers today who are on NPSP and they're thinking about going in the direction of nonprofit side. then maybe we can talk after that about, if you're not on Salesforce today and you're in one of those first two categories, what should you do?

Matt Hui (09:16.012)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (09:38.941)
What if you're an existing customer and you're on NPSP or something else and you've heard about nonprofit cloud? What should you be doing?

Matt Hui (09:47.31)
I'm glad you qualified which path to take because it's a question I get asked often and the conversation can be as long or as short as you really want, but I think it really starts. So let's pick the starting point. You're on NPSP, Nonprofit Success Pack, and you're contemplating an upgrade or a move. I think you first need to understand why are you contemplating it? What's the real motivator here? And this would be an organizational business motivator.

Are you no longer served by the technology that you have? Are you encountering some sort of scale, either growth, so if you're a non-profit, are you encountering to be accepting 2X, 3X, 4X, the amount of donations or grant funding, serving 2X, 3X, 4X, the amount of constituents? So I think it first starts with identifying why do you want to do it? And I think that's really well paired in putting together what we call a roadmap. And this roadmap can integrate

the business objectives, the digital roadmap, what does the future look like as well, but it just effectively it's a plan that we're going forward with. Now let's just go down the happy path in which let's assume we're gonna make that migration because there's enough case to be able to upgrade. I think some key things to consider and think about is, well, one, data. How long have you been using this prior system for?

Scott Billows (11:03.62)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Hui (11:15.138)
Have you been using it for one year or 10 years or 20 years? That is a very, very big factor to consider because the amount of data that you've generated and created over the years is not all gonna be clean. It's just the reality of things. Think of if you've got a notebook, if you're on your first page of your notebook and you have these great dreams of saying, this is gonna look exactly like this, my notes are gonna look like this, by the last page, I can almost guarantee your notes will not look the same.

They will not be structured the same way. And half your pages have probably been ripped out. that's just, think about that, but on a scale of 1 million, 2 million, 10 million, the amount of data and the quality of data may or may not be perfect, ready for a migration or an upgrade. So I think that's one consideration, because the reality is when you're moving to a new system, be it nonprofit, NPSP to nonprofit cloud, you will have to do some sort of porting over of that data and migration of that data.

Scott Billows (11:44.861)
Yeah, yeah, good analogy.

Matt Hui (12:14.926)
Second is understanding as part of this digital roadmap, which we put together digital roadmaps for our clients all the time, and it really gives them a strong blueprint as to where to start, where to go, what's next, and just kind of use as this kind of north star of what are we actually trying to accomplish. But the second big piece here is understanding timing as well. The reality is when you're doing any type of upgrade, any type of migration, you need to understand there's going to be

probably some element of downtime. So are you okay with the time in which you're going live with this new solution? And second to that, understanding that there is a time investment. Every great implementation is a partnership. It involves a heavy integration between whoever is implementing your technology and whoever is receiving that technology. Otherwise, if you're just given something to work off of, you've had no vested interest, you've had no ability to collaborate and provide feedback.

and you're gonna be completely just confused when you first open up this system, right? So I think that's another element is the timing and the time commitment and also understanding that there is something we call change management. What you're gonna be doing, let's say I'm a nonprofit and I click process donation in this old way, while the new way that's being done may be slightly different and that's okay, but it's gonna be different. Now, extrapolate that across a thousand team members.

if you've just one day, you just write off the ability to process donations, well think about how catastrophic that could be for an organization. those are a few. There's obviously a lot of considerations that I've shared, but maybe I'll pass it back to you, Scott. Anything you want to add to your on NPSP, going to NPC, or maybe these other paths.

Scott Billows (13:50.304)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (14:01.771)
Sure.

Scott Billows (14:05.526)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think you've given some very practical examples of what one should consider if they're going to make that move. Maybe we'll all pull that back a bit and say, how do you evaluate if you should make the move? And so when I think about that, I'm looking at, if I'm on, let's just say I'm on NPSP today, should I make the move to Salesforce nonprofit cloud?

Well, that depends. Is the organization functioning well with the current tech stack? If yes, well then a move may not be needed now. You did highlight a few things. If you're scaling or if there's change happening in the organization, that might be the impetus to look at nonprofit cloud. So in terms of really identifying if this is the right time to make the move,

I guess the question to be asked is, what pain or what challenges are being experienced in the organization today that are a direct result of limitations that exist within NPSP? And if those are high, well then, there's a good reason to strongly evaluate moving to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud. We do see customers that

are on NPSP today. you know, I think in their eyes, they probably think, well, hey, I'll be on NPSP forever. That's probably not a great way to think about your current solution. And I'll explain why. Salesforce, when they came out with Nonprofit Cloud back in 2023, they were very clear saying that this is the future. This is the direction that we're going. So anything

else is no longer going to be enhanced, improved, supported. And so if you are on NPSP today, it certainly is, I would say, a business risk that you should consider that if you don't have a plan to at some point move in the direction of Salesforce nonprofit cloud, then you may find yourself in a bit of a tough spot. so Salesforce today is still

Scott Billows (16:33.697)
through their support, they're supporting customers. They're not enhancing the product. They haven't made changes to it, I guess now in the last couple of years, but they are going to support you. Partners like ourselves, we can support you. You can still improve the product yourself. You can build on top of it. You can enhance it. You can customize it. But if we think about sort of all of the

features that Salesforce will roll out in the future. Those are only gonna come with the new product. that is certainly something to consider. Now, let's focus on an organization that is sort of, they've identified, hey, you know what? We do have pain. We've got things that we believe may be solved through migration from NPSP to

Matt Hui (17:12.974)
Scott, I just want to pack onto.

Scott Billows (17:31.995)
Salesforce nonprofit cloud. What are some, I guess, practical things I can think about when it comes to how to prepare for that?

Matt Hui (17:41.698)
Yeah, I think I alluded to it and before I share that, one thought came to mind, Scott, when you're talking about just the risk position that I'll add in there. It's from an organizational perspective, especially in a position where you're steering an organization, is do you want to be defensive or do you want to go on the offense here? And I think that's really key because while Salesforce has shared that they will not stop.

supporting NPSP. There is some risk when all of the R &D, all of the innovation and all of the best features are happening on NPCs. I think it can come from a migration can come from a place of we need to move and then also from a position of we want to move because we want to get ahead. All of the future features will be on this platform. All of the future integrations will be built out for this as well with all of these purpose-built solutions like payment processing like

things that are not served by nonprofit cloud. So that's a key point to think about. Now, practical tips and how to get started with an NPSP to MPC migration. I I think it takes, like I alluded to earlier, it's first off, understanding do we have the budget for this? Because there's, with any type of migration, if there's data component, if you've been using this for a while, there's any type of change, and you're looking to build out nonprofit cloud, there's gonna be some budget element.

to that, to move. It's not a flick of the switch, not yet at least, but it's not flick of the switch to be able to just port everything over. So that's number one is being prepared to have those conversations internally, that okay, what is the budget for this? And working with a partner for that, a partner like ourselves can really help you understand, these are the pieces that you have in place already, this is what it's gonna cost to port over. It's kinda like you are moving on to a different house and

you need movers to help you move into that new house, but you also need further customization of that said new house to be able to get it ready for you. If you have a family of four and you're moving into a much bigger house, well then you need to be able to expand some of the offering of that new house to be able to accommodate your current family. I think that's one important element is budget. Second piece there, I alluded to it earlier, the data piece, that is very important. So if you are on NPSP right now,

Scott Billows (20:06.047)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Hui (20:08.84)
understanding that some functionalities are not one-to-one with nonprofit cloud. So understanding what you may need to add on or enhance or manipulate versus what things maybe you don't need. This is also a really great opportunity, not just a position of, I need to do this. This could be a position of opportunity as well to think, okay, well, this is all of these 10 million records that I've created over the years. Which one of these do I actually not need anymore?

Because maybe there's only five million of those that are practical active records. So there's also a great opportunity to think about your data and how to almost get a pseudo restart to that data as well. It's a really good refresh. So those would be two kind of important considerations when moving from one NPSP to NPC.

Scott Billows (20:50.452)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (21:00.851)
Yeah, okay. Awesome. Well, maybe just to build on that couple of ideas. And this goes with respect to any Salesforce project, be it you're moving to Salesforce for the very first time or you are moving from NPSP to nonprofit cloud. You need to prepare the organization. You need to prepare your leadership team. You need to prepare the board. You need to

I'd be budgeting for these types of things. I think it's a decision to purchase Salesforce really is like any other buying decision. It's what's the value that I'm going to get from making this investment? And what risks am I mitigating by making this decision? what should we expect as an organization in terms of what the

future benefit will look like by making this investment. that can be in terms of funds that we raise or the ability to raise additional funds. can be employee retention. It can be better service of your clients or your constituents. there's so many different ways to think about that and to define that. But I guess a couple of takeaways that I'm...

recalling from this conversation. you know, think about data. Data is so critical. Probably not the first thing people are going to think about when they're looking at moving. You know, I have, you know, I have some pain in my life that I'm trying to solve. My business life, I should clarify. I'm trying to solve, you know, I think going to NPSP or moving from NPSP rather to MPC is going to solve that. You know, I've been on webinars. I've talked to Salesforce. I've heard

I've talked to other customers or heard from other customers in terms of, know, they've gone and made this move, but is this right for me? Well, you know, think about your data because your data is so critical. And as you had shared earlier, a partner like ourselves, we can step in and really just provide an objective view to the current landscape that you're dealing with, provide you with some advice and recommendations. And we'd be happy to jump on a

Scott Billows (23:25.508)
on a call or if possible meet in person and have that conversation and just see if we can help move you to that next step. with that, I think we'll wrap this up and again, for anybody that's wanting to learn more about Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, you can find us at bellmarkcloud.com or reach out to us on one of our socials and we'd love to have that conversation and

With that, Matt, thanks for doing this. We'll wrap this one up. All righty.

Matt Hui (23:57.656)
Thanks Scott, soon.