Non-Profit Tech Blog

Does SalesForce work for nonprofits? According to my highly sophisticated survey… yes.

The data:

• Now you might suggest that nonprofits who had tried SalesForce and hated it might not come to a SF conference in the first place. And further, that the 80 or so of the 350 at the conference that came the breakout session on the AppExchange (which is the marketplace for SF plug-ins) might be the geekier subset and therefore susceptable to acts of impulsive optimism, but:
  • 80% of the people in the room indicated that “YES, mine works!”.
  • 90% of people that had used an AppExchange module said “YES, it works!”
• Those are high numbers. People like this stuff: it is stable and scalable, and developing solutions something often measured in weeks (not years, sometimes months).
  • 
    Take Bob Bennett, for instance. The Family Service Agency of San Francisco describes itself as the safety net of the safety net, working with the homeless and mentally ill – a tough job.  But they built a case management system for its clients and have deployed it to 125 of their staff, and are looking to expand it to another 125. If you have ever worked in human services and attempted case management, you will recognize this as an achievement.
  • SalesForce acknowledged Bob and his team with an Appy award for innovation.
• Some other numbers: Of nonprofits visiting the AppExchange web site, something like 10,000 have given a “test drive” to a custom module. Of those, 6,000 have installed special features to their “sandbox” (a copy of your account SF gives you to play around in). Of those, 1,600 lead to deployments within the nonprofit’s live database. That is a lot.

I have been watching and waiting on SF for six years. In my book, it has finally crossed the tipping point between skepticism about its relevance to our space, and confidence that it can deliver.

Doug