NGP VAN vs. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

Well suited when we have to run lists of those already canvassed or need to be canvassed. Not Well suited when the phone bank and MiniVAN does not work together. As it could cause someone to canvass someone who has just been phone banked or vice versa. Also, need to better provide emailing options.

If you only want to track donations, I'd go with something simpler. If you want to track donations and programs and connections between them, there may be nothing better. If you have no technical abilities and no budget, restricted yourself solely to what it does as described exactly in the manual. If you can't devote about 0.25FTE to the constant maintenance and upgrades, don't go with it.

Incentivized

• Detailed searches
• Storing data
• Creating walk packets
• Creating functional, easy to use phone banks

• NPSP is designed to help with donor management.
• There are free add-ons for volunteer management.
• There is a new Program Management Module to better manage program participation and attendance.
• Campaigns help organize and report on marketing efforts though we use a third-party solution to send out marketing materials.

Incentivized

• Accurate data depends upon people updating in a timely manner.
• Sometimes I’ve had trouble putting lists into miniVAN, maybe a training need
• In the past, had issues getting right permissions from state Dems to access NGP VAN

• Learning curve - very powerful, but takes time to learn
• Batch processing - takes time and advanced skills to reach efficiency for data entry and certain operations which you want to do in batch
• Mass email is extremely limited - must choose a third party tool which adds complexity and cost to the system

Incentivized

As long as I’m an active Democratic volunteer I will use it, unless the Dems quit using it. I enjoy using NGP VAN and discovering more capabilities as I spend more time with it.

There is really no other tool to compare and especially since Salesforce for Nonprofits is free!!

Incentivized

I think you have to have understanding of computer basics to master NGP VAN. I doubt a non-computer person, or someone who is hesitant about technology could do much with NGP VAN. It helps if you’re sort of a computer nerd (as I am, despite my old age) because then you don’t worry about experimenting.

I think Salesforce has so much functionality that it makes it difficult in terms of overall usability. Once you can figure it out, it's a 10/10, it's just getting there. If you're willing to do the work to figure it out then you're golden. For what it's worth, I don't know if you're going to find something with this level of functionality that's easier to figure out

Incentivized

I have never had bad conversations with any support people with Salesforce but we also have not used them very much. I put it a little less because we are struggling to switch to lightning (some of our custom features do not migrate well) and it feels like the help and support for a little organization is not incredibly helpful unless we want to spend a lot of money.

Incentivized

I can hardly remember since it was years ago. Various individuals have also coached me since then. If I can actually play around with it myself that’s the best way to increase my proficiency.

I have no other experience.

As a cloud native organization with no previous Microsoft infrastructure, Salesforce was a more logical and effective option for us. The suite of products was also far more comprehensive and required less customization. We were able to adopt a "configure not code" approach to our development of systems to support our mission that lowered the cost of upgrades.

Incentivized

• helped with campaign
• saved records for the following year
• assisted all involved with campaigns

• Salesforce has allowed us to easily track donor communications in one area, which I believe has improved our donor communication overall.
• Salesforce for Nonprofits has made it easier on my org to track and pull donation-related information and has reduced the amount of time we need to do these regular tasks.

Incentivized