Reflections from Salesforce.org’s Nonprofit Summit: It’s All About the Data!
At the recent Salesforce Nonprofit Summit, CMO of Nonprofit and Education Marie Rosecrans shared three key themes of the event:
- The power of building strong relationships to achieve your mission
- The importance of supporting your mission with flexibility, integration, and innovation
- The value of having secure data to gain deeper insights
These themes immediately resonated with the Omatic team in attendance – and are quite connected in our experience. So, as your organization considers what they mean to you, we’d like to dive a little deeper into how Omatic can support your nonprofit in these three areas.
Building Strong Relationships to Achieve Your Mission
According to Cause IQ, there are nearly 1.9 million nonprofit organizations in the United States. These organizations support an array of causes – animal rights, arts and culture, education, healthcare, and human services – to name a few. Each of these organizations represents a unique mission. And each is also competing for donors to support that mission.
With so many options for charitable giving available to supporters, building personal relationships is essential to a nonprofit’s success. Donors have unique reasons for making gifts. They may also have strong preferences on how and when they give – and how and when they receive communication.
Tip: When planning your next campaign, incorporate multiple outreach methods and segment your audience according to their preferred communication style. Even if you haven’t collected this information on your donors, there are some general trends you can leverage, such as generational preferences. Here are a few resources on the topic: Understanding Generational Communication Differences and Differences Between Generations and Style of Communication.
The Landscape of Donor Engagement
The landscape of donor engagement has experienced significant changes since the pandemic’s onset. Live events went virtual. Face-to-face meetings turned to Zoom. While these shifts were often challenging, they also created new opportunities.
Virtual events, for example, aren’t constrained by location and open doors for new attendees. Though many organizations are returning to in-person events, they are also considering how to continue expanding their reach through hybrid events.
Taking advantage of best-of-breed technology is important to fundraising organizations in today’s ever-evolving landscape. From event and volunteer management to email marketing – the functions these technologies support are vast, but a common need exists among the organizations who leverage them – the ability to gain an accurate and complete picture of their supporters.
Without integrating your ancillary technologies and Salesforce CRM, a complete picture of constituent data is impossible, limiting your ability to personalize outreach and nurture relationships.
On the other hand, when the data in your systems are up-to-date and accurate, you can accomplish tasks that drive mission impact more efficiently. For example, you can send messages to the right people at the right time or expedite gift entry so that acknowledgment timing exceeds donor expectations.
Are you interested in seeing this in action? The American Lung Association (ALA) uses Salesforce NPSP as one of its main CRM systems, Salesforce Marketing Cloud for email marketing, and Blackbaud Luminate Online for digital engagement, including event registrations, online giving, and email interest groups. But its team struggled to integrate Luminate Online and Salesforce. However, after recently deploying Omatic Cloud, they have been able to integrate critical data and send more personalized email communication effectively. Check out the case study to learn more.
Supporting your mission with flexibility, integration, and innovation
We’ve already highlighted the importance of data integration in building personal relationships, so let’s look at flexibility. While the need to gain an accurate and complete picture of supporters is common among nonprofits, the technology requirements of each are likely more unique based on how they engage with supporters.
Does your organization hold events? Rely on email marketing? Do you attract new supporters to your mission through social media or peer-to-peer fundraising?
While ALA uses Salesforce and Luminate Online in the example above, nonprofits use many other digital engagement solutions. You can find many of these integrations by activity on the Salesforce NPSP page of our website.
When using multiple platforms, apps, and data sources, your data integration strategy should:
- Address every data source and destination – Nonprofits today require an integration strategy that flexes with changing organizational needs and supports easily adding new data sources as needed.
- Ensure quality and efficiency in data exchange – Too often, native import tools and data loaders have limited functionality, are cumbersome to use, and result in duplicates or other data errors.
Regardless of what technology you use now – or will use in the future, Omatic provides the flexibility to integrate best-of-breed technology with your primary CRM, so you can use all your data to deepen your supporter relationships.
The value of having secure data to gain deeper insights
Any discussion of nonprofit data would be incomplete without considering data security. Supporters trust you with their data, and your mission relies on maintaining that trust. So, you must also trust your partners to keep your supporters’ data secure.
At Omatic we’re committed to handling our customer and partner data securely. In addition to ensuring Omatic Cloud meets HIPAA requirements, we received our SOC 2 Type II certification, a globally recognized security measure that rates compliance with security, availability, and confidentiality best practices. For more details, check out our Guide to Security and Privacy Standards, written by Ken Haigh, Omatic COO/CTO.
Key Takeaway: When your organization’s data is complete, accurate, and secure, you can use that data to drive meaningful insights and action. For over 20 years, Omatic has delivered purpose-built data application integration solutions for social-impact organizations. We seamlessly integrate your ancillary nonprofit applications with your main CRM system – freeing up team time, enhancing data quality, and improving revenue performance. Learn more by signing up for a demo or an upcoming webinar, or check us out on the Salesforce AppExchange.
Sign up for a demo today!