Soapbox Engage Blog

Salesforce is a powerful and sophisticated tool for nonprofits. It has so many useful features that it can feel overwhelming to learn how to use the platform to the fullest. Imagine taking a child to the front of a 747 airliner, and instead of asking her if she wants to say "hi" to the pilots, say, "alright, time for you to fly the plane!" Just a bit overwhelming, right?

Salesforce Trailhead and NPSP Days are excellent ways to learn Salesforce, making it fun and easy for your organization gets the most out of Salesforce. Our own Soapbox Engage even has a Salesforce MVP on staff help organizations understand how to integrate Salesforce to grow your organization's success.

Since our team can't hang out with the whole Salesforce nonprofit community every day (we try!), some self-service approaches to learning Salesforce could come in handy. Here are three of our favorite Salesforce Trailhead training resources for nonprofits, along with information about our own NPSP Days.

What is Salesforce Trailhead?

Salesforce Trailhead is a series of training courses, called "trails", that help you learn how to use the various Salesforce features to the fullest. Salesforce Trailhead includes practical, interactive examples in their training modules to maximize your learning and help you get the most out of it. Best yet, when you complete a trail, you receive virtual badges to add to your online portfolio and LinkedIn profiles. Show the world you success!

Trailhead content is a fantastic place for beginner and intermediate Salesforce users to feel more comfortable with the platform. Training modules simplify Salesforce and help even the most technologically challenged users feel confident about using Salesforce. It also includes specific Salesforce training content for nonprofits (more on this below).

There are numerous benefits to Salesforce Trailhead, and since all the trails are self-paced, you can learn what you need when you need it. The training content is organized so you don’t have to figure out the order in which to complete training sessions. Completing the Salesforce trails is even a major resume booster, too!

The Best Salesforce Trailhead Training For Nonprofits

It's great that there's a ton of trails out there, but which Salesforce Trailhead trails are best for our own non-profit community? Each trail introduces a feature of Salesforce, explains why and when the function is useful and teaches you how to use it. Almost all the Salesforce trailhead training modules are beneficial for nonprofits, but there are several trails that are particularly valuable and worth your time to complete. Let's dive into a few of them!

Admin Beginner Trail

The Admin Beginner trail introduces the Salesforce platform and teaches you all the basics of customizing Salesforce to fit your needs. It covers topics like how to build “Use Cases” for the Salesforce platform and how to set everything up for your nonprofit. You will also learn how to create and customize things like Lightning apps, list views, record details, buttons, and links.

This trail also helps you set up your Salesforce mobile app, which can be a valuable tool for you on-the-go.

Salesforce estimates it will take most customers about 8.5 hours to complete all six modules in the Admin Beginner trail; however, you can complete the modules at your pace and skip around to the content as you need it.

Admin Intermediate Trail

The Admin Intermediate trail helps you use the point-and-click feautres that will make Salesforce do most of the things organizations want it to do for them. That's right, have no fear, there’s no need to learn how to code or hire a computer wizard to customize much of Salesforce!

Keep your data secure

In this Trailhead, you'll learn how to control who has access to your organization’s data on Salesforce using the security tools. It is easy to control who can access or change elements within Salesforce, providing each person with the appropriate amount of access to your critical data in Salesforce. You'll also learn how to create “sharing rules” to make sure your information stays secure.

Build Picklists

With this trail, you'll also learn everything you need to know about choosing custom field options easily with Picklists. Picklists are menus that expand to show available choices in a field (sometimes called "dropdown menus"), making it easy to select data. There's lots of custom field types, but really, these will get used a lot in your Salesforce org!

Create custom apps and find solutions on the AppExchange

Did you know you can build a custom app for your Salesforce org without writing any code? Follow the easy step-by-step instructions in this Admin Intermediate trail to learn how to build one in less than three hours!

If you're short on time and don’t want to create a Salesforce app or functionality from scratch...but still need something more than exists out-of-the-box, you’ll probably find what you're looking for in the AppExchange. It's like that someone else in the Salesforce ecosystem has felt your same pain and already built what you want! If not, you can even use the AppExchange to find a community of Salesforce partners, admins, and developers that can help you build the right solution for your needs.

Even if you aren’t sure exactly what you need or want, you can browse the AppExchange Collections to help you find top solutions for various challenges you might run into during your Salesforce journey.

Use Lightning Flow to automate processes

Creating an automated Salesforce user experience used to be a complicated, time-consuming process that required hiring a computer wizard and perhaps a lot of hopeful wishing. Lightning Flow is hot these days, and makes it easy to build a beautiful, seamless automated user experience!

The Admin Intermediate trail teaches you everything you need to know about Lightning Flow and will help you build the right process or flow for your nonprofit. Whether you need to collect information from your community or you want to create a business process that allows your employees to request time off, Lightning Flow has the solution for you.

Salesforce experts estimate it will take the average user about 14 hours to complete all the training modules in the Admin Intermediate trail, but this content will be well worth your time and energy. You'll be able to solve your organization’s Salesforce needs, and it will probably elevate your status to “Salesforce Admin wizard.”

Nonprofit Success Pack Trail

Now, let's get right to the core needs we have in our non-profit world: what features are available for non-profits to use and learn about Salesforce? Taking one step back might be helpful to bring in the bigger picture.

Salesforce was initially designed to streamline and automate the sales process of businesses (albeit, this was a long time ago). Salesforce.org understands that the needs of nonprofits are unique, which is why back in 2007, Salesforce.org created the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), which customizes Salesforce specifically for the needs of non-profit organizations.

In the Nonprofit Success Pack trail, you will learn all the basics of how to use the NPSP, including how data is stored and related to other data. You'll be organizing your contacts, donors, volunteers, and other important information quickly!

At the end of this trail built specifically for non-profits, you'll be able to tell your coworkers exactly why your organization is implementing Salesforce and what Salesforce will do to help your team be more successful. You’ll also be able to more easily capture real-time, accurate information about donors, community members, employees, and much more, while improving your relationship with major donors by offering personalized experiences to them. Free up your staff to focus on their work instead of spending time on tracking data and other administrative tasks!

In-Person Non-Profit Salesforce Training at NPSP Day Events

While the Salesforce Trailhead resources are outstanding, nothing compares to hands-on, personal collaboration with fellow members of your own non-profit community. Our team at Soapbox Engage leads all the world's NPSP Days around the world. These are live, in-person training and networking events specifically for nonprofits who use the Salesforce NPSP. Think of it as the Salesforce.org Power of Us Hub, but live and in-person!

Every NPSP Day begins with an opportunity to connect with people who lead other nonprofits in your region. It is essential to foster community and help people work together to solve challenges, but the day's knowledge sharing takes a cue from the open source community's unconference format to best match the needs of the attendees, in real-time.

NPSP Day offers technical help and training

At these events, you'll have access to the deep knowledge of Salesforce non-profit community experts, and learn how other organizations are addressing the same challenges you're facing. At the end of an NPSP Day, you'll have new friends to help you keep the knowledge moving forward after the event. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to network, job search, and learn more about professional development in the Salesforce ecosystem.

Popular NPSP Day Salesforce Nonprofit Topics

We strive to make sure you have all the reasons you need to attend and NPSP Day, especially with interactive and practical breakouts. The content for each day is based on questions attendees ask, so, you get to shape the agenda for your own needs! Plus, we always include demos and share deep dive information about the Nonprofit Success Pack.

Some of the most popular topics at NPSP Days typically revolve around fundraising, managing events and programs, volunteer management, marketing and communication tools, and a ton around specific Salesforce admin skills like generating reports and dashboards. Come with your list of questions and challenges, and the NPSP Day community will help you find answers and solutions--and others in the room asking similar questions!

Who should attend NPSP Day Events?

If you're a current or prospective Salesforce user, nonprofit executive or consultant, or Salesforce administrator at an organization, then these days are for you! Whether your organization is considering using NPSP or you have been using it for a long time, attending gives you a great opportunity to learn more in a fun atmosphere.

Combining Your Online Engagement With Salesforce Training

To bring all your internal Salesforce skills to your external community, you'll want to harness the power of Salesforce to craft online engagement experiences for your community. Think of this as the online extension of all the great data you're collecting in Salesforce. Whether you are planning a 5K charity run, hosting a benefit auction, organizing your donor contact information, or conducting a donor satisfaction survey, we can help you use Salesforce to do it. Combining this with tools like Soapbox Engage, you're able to supercharge your organization's mission, raise money, connect with donors, and much more. Best yet, you don’t have to be tech-savvy to ensure that the data you're collecting is ending up in the proper home in Salesforce.

Here are a few highlights of what Soapbox Engage can help you accomplish with Salesforce:

• Send emails to different lists and comply with the CAN-SPAM Act using Soapbox Mailer.
• Accept donations online and gather all the right information for your accounting with the Soapbox Engage Donations app.
• Sell tickets or allow people to sign up for an event online with Soapbox Engage Events app. Run many events at the same time and keep everything organized!
• Use Soapbox Engage Forms app to easily collect any information you need.
• Easily create searchable directories and libraries of information using Soapbox Engage Directories app
• Your e-commerce store will look and perform spectacularly! Whatever you are selling, Soapbox Engage Shop app will help you do it easily--and it’s compatible with Stripe and other online payment options.
• Mobilize your network to take action with Soapbox Engage Petitions app. They are completely customizable forms and there is no fee-per-signature! Your data belongs to you.
• Create an unlimited number of Soapbox Engage Actions app pages that let your community members send their unique messages to those who need to hear it.

Whew. Alright, are you ready to learn more about how to use Salesforce effectively? Here are three additional resources to help you continue the journey to learning more about getting the most out of Salesforce.

• Best Nonprofit Fundraising Software: 6 Awesome Tools: Online fundraising is essential to the success of every nonprofit. We found some of the best software that integrates with Salesforce to help nonprofits with their online fundraising. The top-rated nonprofit fundraising platform is our Soapbox Engage Donations suite. It can work as a standalone tool or seamlessly integrate with Salesforce CRM systems.
• Easily Accept Stripe Online Payments With Soapbox Engage: Whether you want to host an online fundraising campaign, sell tickets to your next event, or have an online store, use Soapbox Engage to create mobile-friendly online payment forms that integrate with Stripe. Make accepting online payments a breeze for your nonprofit!
• Customize Your Nonprofit’s Online petition With Your Own Questions: Help your nonprofit rally support for a campaign or collect important information from your donors with the Soapbox Engage Petitions app. Take your online advocacy to the next level and collect all the information you need without writing a single line of code!