Here’s what I find some funny – some of the stuff we’re coding MIGHT be the equivalent of the “waiting room sign up” list – but that’s only because we’re trying to get folks to embrace CRM as more than just a tool – I’d like it to be a way of doing business, a way of thinking, a way of engaging stakeholders to a deeper relationship. So – if that waiting room list can be handled in Salesforce and an agency can do away with an extra tool – we’re all in favor!

We do post any of our work that is ready. One of the challenges I face is knowing when to take a process or a procedure that we implemented for one agency, and turn it into something a tad more general – so it can be applicable to many. I find that we have to create it a couple of times before we know enough to make it more general.

For instance – we implemented a zip code lookup (enter the city, get the zip) and a legislative lookup (enter the address get the voting district) but have to figure out an easy way for another developer to find the proper array of info so they can plug it to make it work in say, New York!

Cheers,

Patrick

Well, the kind of app development you’re seeing is legitimate then (at least in my eyes), although I suspect a sufficiently advanced nonprofit ERP system (which I don’t think exists yet) would eventually head in that direction. I don’t mind it if nonprofits do custom development specifically around processes that are core to their new initiatives and if they take the time to do some process engineering too. I do have objections only to coding yet another waiting room signup sheet application etc.

Are people adding salesforce because they needed to model a new business process in code and there was no existing software that did that? Or were they previously salesforce users who were taking a step up as it were in their usage of salesforce?

One thing: Is NPower going to make these modules available so that other nonprofits can benefit from this work and perhaps even improve upon it? That’s also the promise of salesforce too, no?

If anyone else here develops for non-profits, feel free to chime in. This is good stuff.

Some of what we’re seeing fits your description – but a lot doesn’t. For instance – a nonprofit school needed a complex way to track guardians – who can sign a medical release, who can pick a kid up after school, who can authorize a field trip -and that had to be flexible enough for up to 8 different adults!

Another project matches teen interns with nonprofits looking for help – so – a pretty complicated workflow regarding that application and matching process.

And another was around the avaialabiltiy of medical interpretors at local hospitals – with the interpreters being able to update their language skills and certs adn availability.

A lot of our customer that are leveraging the opportunity pipeline, though – I think that’s where there IS a lot of opportunity to standardize, share, re-use, clarify and codify best practice and more.

Let’s see. In the last year or so – almost ALL of our customers have pretty willingly gone through a planning process with us prior to implementation – and that has been terrific. Maybe not a full fledged business re-engineering process – but before we agree to move ahead – we’ve some a lot of work around exactly what those processes are now and what they should be.

Thanks for the speedy reply and for keeping this discussion moving. The combination of open and open source – and our ability to leverage those for nonprofits makes a compelling set of tools!

My guess is that many nonprofits tend to use hosted software without looking at their business processes first. I’ve learned that there is a pretty vast gap between what an ED knows and what line staff knows about how things get done in an organization and I believe it’s this gap that causes a lot of the headaches in a deployment of ASP or SaaS software in a nonprofit.

In general, nonprofits in the social services sector almost never do best practices gathering or do formal knowledge sharing with near-peers in their sector. It’s kinda horrific and I think this ends up driving customization more than it ought to. It’s my dream that we finally get to the point that standardized business processes are made available to nonprofits in the sector and that program managers and their staff are made aware of it. Frankly, that’s partly why I started socialmarkets.org. It seems silly to me that a two nonprofits sharing the same base set of clients would have entirely different business logic handling them but that’s where we are now. One of the reasons I still like Salesforce.com is that I’m holding out the hope that a nonprofit would, in effect, adopt the business process of another more successful nonprofit by simply adopting the same CRM and ERP modules of that nonprofit.

I think that’s good. It helps with user adoption, helps them meet particular business needs (not general ones) and so on.

When we first started, we envisioned Salesforce.com (but it could be ANY CRM as far as I’m concerned) that become less and less expensive, and became easier and easier to implement and adopt. A bit of that promise is coming true – but what I’m noticing is that the business needs of our customers are increasingly complex – and one size doesn’t fit all. I’m wary of vendors who are selling the “my software will do it all and you can customize it on your own” because I’m not seeing the truth in those statements yet.

But I’d be happy to be wrong!

Have to disagree with you here- even Salesforce acknowledges that ‘basic’ customizations for tiny organization cost thousands (this was in the recent article in Non Profit Times). Why? Because you have to reinvent the wheel at every turn.

I’d rather have ‘tiny’ non profits go with a proven solution from any of a dozen competitors- we live and breathe this stuff every day.

History repeats itself all the time. Remember The ‘Donation Switchboard’ in Microsoft Access? Or what about Ebase? Both have dissappeared.

Sorry to sound like a broken record. I’d love to show you what I think are the MAJOR differences and I also want to understand your point of view. Give me a call/email- we’ve chatted over the blog a few times and it’s probably time to meet, lol.

-Jon

Jon Biedermann
Vice President
DonorPerfect CRM Fundraising Software
http://www.donorperfect.com/dpoblog
jonb (at) donorperfect.com

I think in general, despite the announcement, you can have a strategy where you start off with nonprofitforce and see if you have a need for Aikido later. It’s an interesting downmarket strategy. If you’re a tiny nonprofit — do salesforce.com with nonprofitforce. It’s free to use and if you don’t have any existing business processes, you’ll end up adopting Salesforce.com as your base set of processes. If you’ve got good execs who can project manage developers, by all means, work with it and shape the software to what your business processes will be later. However, all things being equal, it’s highly unlikely that nonprofit execs will create a unique business process that will confer competitive advantage in fundraising on their nonprofit. I believe even CRMs and CRM skillsets will be commoditized in the future and we’re seeing that process accelerate.

Thanks for the heads up about Convio. Aikido sounds intriguing but my question is this. After seeing the power of salesforce.com and getting licenses for free from their foundation I’m wondering who would be willing to fork over money to Convio for something they can customize themselves? Granted it’s going to require some time for us, but not being locked in to a vendor seems worth it to me. Salesforce.com has created an unbeatable deal for non-profits and Convio seems to be coming along for the ride too late. That being said, nonprofitforce still has a ways to go with respect to relationships.