Soapbox Engage Blog

On October 21st, we were able to gather in person once again for the return of NPSP Days! We kicked off our first event (since 2019!) with our friends in Seattle. I was thrilled to facilitate NPSP Day Seattle alongside Katie McFadden and Natali Terreri from Common Voyage.

NPSP Days are a chance to come together for a full day of collaboration to benefit the nonprofit and education sectors' use of the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack. These events have happened across the globe and have yielded some incredible solutions, workarounds, and ideas. And this event was no different!

This was our first time being able to come back together in person since the start of the Covid pandemic. It was so wonderful to be able to gather again as a community. There was a vast variety of nonprofit organizations. Some of the organizations represented included: National Network of Abortion Funds, PATH, Nonprofit Association of Washington, and College Success Foundation.

There were 45 of us gathered at Pacific Tower, the home of our host organization, 501 Commons. The top level of the building gave us a beautiful sweeping view of the entire city of Seattle! This was the perfect backdrop for the many stimulating conversations we had throughout the day.

The purpose of this day was for nonprofit staff, consultants, and Salesforce admin to come together to share knowledge, pose questions, and solve problems. It was a chance to understand the greater Salesforce landscape and discuss #nptech best practices.

To get us started, we facilitated an exercise called “NPSP Weather Report.” We broke into small groups where people shared what about Salesforce was working for them, what wasn’t working for them, and what was unknown. We wrote these on sticky notes and posted them all together, so people could see common trends and themes. This helped us identify the patterns, and gave us our “forecast” for the types of things we would talk about. It was a great primer to get us ready for the variety of Salesforce conversations we were going to have.

We had three different rounds of breakouts throughout the day, with four breakout sessions for each round. This was a chance to dive deeply into specific areas of Salesforce. There were twelve topics, including:

• Salesforce Automations and Flows
• Fundraising, Donations, and Grants Management
• Learning/Professional Development
• Analytics and Business Intelligence in Salesforce
• Volunteer Management
• Salesforce Reports and Dashboards
• Experience Cloud and Portals
• Program Management Module
• Communications, Marketing, and Pardot
• And (if you can believe it) more!

In addition to gaining clarity and expertise to optimize Salesforce NPSP, these breakouts gave us a chance to collaborate more deeply with a smaller group of folks.

It was truly wonderful to be able to connect in person with this group. In our opening circle, one participant shared that this felt like a “community revival.” I definitely echo that sentiment!

Some people in the room were brand new to Salesforce, some were seasoned, and everyone was able to benefit from the chance to learn with each other. Many of us carry similar roles or face similar challenges when it comes to Salesforce and NPSP. Bridging the gap between the nonprofit world and the technology world will always yield incredible ideas and solutions.

I personally felt reinvigorated to be in that space, and I did my best to share that energy through facilitation with Katie and Natali. And I think it worked! The enthusiasm was truly infectious. People didn’t want it to end. In fact, many kept the fun going and attended the local Seattle Nonprofit User Group happy hour that happened after the day had ended.

After this NPSP Day, I believe our community is recharged and motivated. I’m excited for what will come from the connections formed. And I look forward to seeing how organizations can flourish by making the most of Salesforce features and offerings. A lot of good can be done in the world when we share the right knowledge, resources, and tools.

Until next time!