Soapbox Engage Blog

NPSP Sprint Baltimore 2017

I need to apologize to Kevin Bromer.

Kevin is the Vice President of Product Delivery at Salesforce.org. He's also the father of the Nonprofit Success Pack. We chatted between sessions at the NPSP Community Sprint in Baltimore this March. I was participating in a breakout group led by Megan Himan of BrightStep Partners and Dean Graham of Wombat Works tackling issues around User Defined Rollups in the NPSP when I learned about a limitation. I told Kevin in no uncertain terms that this limitation of User Defined Rollups made them virtually useless.

I was wrong.

Since the NPSP Sprint, we've cooked up twelve Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack how-to recipes here at Soapbox Engage dedicated to extending the NPSP. From cultivating sustaining donors to calculating lifetime donor value to reporting on donor retention and donor churn to donor segmentation for #GivingTuesday appeals to personalized next ask amounts, they focus on maximizing fundraising success for nonprofits.

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And nearly all of them use User Defined Rollups in the NPSP. In fact the latest recipe which charts donor retention cumulatively by month against acquisiton cumulatively by month and a goal has no less than six.

You could say I've become obsessed.

For whatever value these free little recipes might offer the community, they wouldn't have been created as quickly, or at all, had I not attended the NPSP Community Sprint. It was there that breakout sessions and unplanned hallway conversations filled out knowledge that I didn't know I needed. I am not alone. Many others have similar stories to tell. Stories of how attending a Salesforce nonprofit community event empowered them with new knowledge, new contacts, or new ideas and promptly sent them back into the wide world to do good - or even great - things that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. And this all above and beyond the published and publicized results of the event.

Attendee-suggested topics for address management breakout at NPSP Sprint Baltimore 2017

That's the whole point of getting together - and the beauty of the "unconference" format relied upon at these events that puts participant-suggested topics front and center. That's part of the power of this community, our community. Whether it is at an official Salesforce.org NPSP Community Sprint or a community-led event like NPSP Day here in DC tomorrow, face-to-face matters. It has power, and that power can translate into concrete results that levels up nonprofits to achieve more than they could have otherwise.

For those attending NPSP Day in DC tomorrow, get ready to level up! If you aren't able to attend NPSP Day in DC tomorrow, there are events in Chicago on October 20th, Portland on October 25th, and San Francisco on October 26th with more added all the time. If you're interested in joining an NPSP Community Sprint, follow the group in the Power of Us Hub for upcoming announcements.

And Kevin, I'm sorry. I was wrong. I was so very wrong.