Soapbox Engage Blog

We're back with a recap of NPSP Day San Francisco! On September 23, the Salesforce nonprofit community gathered at the SPUR Urban Center for a day of learning, troubleshooting, and swapping stories about what it really takes to run Salesforce at a nonprofit.

The Bay Area community showed up ready to dig in. Solo admins, development directors, finance staff, and consultants filled the room, and the conversations were refreshingly candid. People came with real questions, and just as many came ready with answers they'd learned the hard way.

Across nine breakout sessions, one idea kept surfacing: the best Salesforce systems are the ones people can understand, maintain, and trust. Whether the topic was standard operating procedures, duplicate management, automation, or AI, attendees kept returning to the same fundamentals. Document what you build. Simplify wherever you can. Make sure knowledge doesn't live in just one person's head.

NPSP Day San Francisco was hosted by Soapbox Engage, with Idlewild Partners and Data Geeks Lab sponsoring the day and sharing their Salesforce expertise throughout the sessions. A special thank you to Michelle at SPUR for opening the doors to the Urban Center and making us feel so welcome.

Below is a look at the breakout sessions and some of the key takeaways from the day.

Breakout Sessions & Key Takeaways

Key Takeaways

• Simplify the process before documenting it: If an SOP asks users to edit fields by hand and mistakes keep happening, a screen flow or other guardrail may be the better fix. The fewer steps users need to follow, the less room for error.
• Use both video and written SOPs: Short videos work well for quick procedures, while written guides are better for detailed step-by-step work. Tools like Loom and Scribe can speed up creation, though it's worth checking with IT first.
• Let the process owner write it: Whoever owns a process drafts the steps, then shares them with other admins and stakeholders for peer review before rolling them out.
• Write in plain language: Teammates and AI tools can help translate technical steps into language anyone in the organization can follow. Some attendees set up AI projects with a standard SOP framework and their organization's voice built in.
• Document as you build: Writing the SOP alongside a new build is far easier than reconstructing it later, and it keeps information from becoming siloed.
• Keep SOPs current: An outdated SOP can cause as many problems as a missing one. Regular team review helps keep documentation aligned with how the system works today.

Key Takeaways

• Find where duplicates start: Knowing which forms, integrations, or processes create duplicates is the first step toward stopping them.
• Try Classic for tricky merges: A surprising ah-ha moment for many: some attendees find merging accounts easier in Salesforce Classic, so they switch over for the merge and then switch back to Lightning.
• Merge households first: Moving duplicate contacts into the same household before merging them helps avoid leftover "ghost" addresses.
• Use the right tools for bulk cleanup: Attendees highlighted Apsona for duplicate management, Zaapit for bulk editing and merging, and Org Check for general org cleanup.
• Treat cleanup like housework: Scheduling recurring cleanup tasks and tackling a few reports at a time keeps the work manageable. Some admins save repetitive cleanup for the end of the day, when their brains need a break from harder problems.
• Lean on your consultants: When you hit a wall, a consultant can be your best resource. Just come prepared with a clear, concise description of the problem.

Key Takeaways

• Start with the question: Choosing the right report type is often the biggest hurdle. Knowing exactly what you want to learn makes it easier to pick the right objects, fields, and filters.
• Use formula fields to simplify filters: Instead of stacking conditions in a report, a single formula field can combine the logic into one true/false check.
• Track what matters most: Pledge balances, overdue grants, recurring donations, deadlines, and progress toward fundraising goals were among the metrics attendees rely on most.
• Make dashboards hard to miss: Setting a dashboard as a user's home page puts key information in front of them every time they log in.
• Turn reporting into a team skill: Training more staff to run their own reports takes the load off the one person everyone asks and makes Salesforce an organizational tool, not a personal one.

Key Takeaways

• Meet more often: Regular check-ins between finance and development help teams catch discrepancies early, before they become month-end headaches.
• Agree on definitions: The two teams don't need identical systems, but they do need a shared understanding of what each term means.
• Give finance its own section: A dedicated set of accounting fields, often populated by formulas or flows, gives finance what it needs without altering NPSP's standard fields.
• Report on the right date: Online donations may appear in Salesforce on the gift date while the funds arrive later. Some organizations report on the payment received date so Salesforce lines up with accounting records.
• Make data ownership everyone's job: When one team enters data on behalf of another, accountability can slip. Clear ownership across all staff reduces errors.

For more on keeping development and finance aligned, check out our tips for streamlining your nonprofit's financial reports.

Key Takeaways

• Ask two questions first: How likely is human error in this step, and how much time will automating it save? The answers help separate good automation candidates from ones better left manual.
• Do it manually before automating it: One team revised its definition of a hot, warm, or cold lead six times during brainstorming. Automating too early would have locked in the wrong logic and created technical debt.
• Test in a sandbox: Build use cases before rollout, use debug mode, and create records the way an end user would to see how the automation really behaves.
• Map it visually: Tools like Miro help teams see where information comes from and how it moves into Salesforce, which builds buy-in from colleagues outside the admin team.
• Plan for the admin's day off: Automations that need periodic manual updates, like date-based discounts, should have an SOP or be automated themselves.
• AI can help in a pinch: Some admins share screenshots of a broken flow with an AI assistant to troubleshoot urgent issues.

Key Takeaways

• Make logging easy: A screen flow button on Tasks or Contacts lets fundraisers add meeting notes or log a call in a few clicks. Some organizations also route donor emails to Cases or Tasks with a triage step to connect them to the right Contact.
• Show leaders why data matters: Explaining the value of logged activity, and even gamifying the process, can help encourage senior staff who meet with donors to record their conversations.
• Build dashboards for each audience: Attendees described three tiers: a personal portfolio dashboard for each fundraiser, a detailed organization-wide view for internal teams, and a higher-level summary for the board. The same reports can often power all three.
• Get creative with Campaigns: An Opportunity can connect to more than one Campaign, which opens up options for tracking matching gifts. Other approaches include a checkbox on the Opportunity or a matching campaign nested under the annual campaign.
• Review data regularly: Quarterly reviews and reports on metrics like average gift size prompt new questions and build the habit of monitoring data.

Looking to get more out of your donor data? Read our guide to using CRM data to find and prioritize major gift prospects.

Key Takeaways

• Sandbox everything: Testing a new app in a sandbox before it touches production was the most repeated advice in the room.
• Audit what you already have: Many organizations are paying for overlapping tools. Understanding how each app is used can uncover duplicate software and savings.
• Break up long forms: Daisy-chaining several short FormAssembly forms, rather than using one long form, gives teams visibility into who starts a form and where they drop off.
• Watch for spreadsheet limits: Pulling Salesforce reports into Google Sheets can run into a 2,000-row limit. Importing through a query instead of a report, or using a tool like G-Connector, can help work around it.
• Plan for vendor changes: Attendees shared a story of a tool shutting down with little notice for users to migrate, a reminder to have a backup plan for critical integrations.
• No app is perfect: Every tool comes with tradeoffs, and apps should be reassessed regularly as needs and pricing change.

Key Takeaways

• Set policy before adoption: Create an AI policy and a data governance policy and share them with staff before rolling out AI tools. Define which tools are approved and what information staff can enter into them.
• Protect your data: Using business or enterprise accounts, rather than personal ones, helps keep organizational data protected.
• Consider the donor relationship: Is it okay for a donor's first interaction to be with a chatbot? Attendees encouraged organizations to think through the ethics of AI in donor engagement and be transparent about how it's used.
• Clean data comes first: AI agents need context, not just data, and the cost of bad data is now higher than ever. Salesforce offers resources, including a data readiness assessment, to help organizations gauge whether they're ready.
• Experiment safely: Free Agentforce credits can be used to test an agent in a sandbox before committing to anything in production.
• Bring in help: Working with an experienced contractor can make early AI projects smoother and safer.

Wondering whether your own data is ready? Read Is Your Donor Data Ready for AI-Powered Fundraising?

Key Takeaways

• Keep a master email calendar: When messages go out from multiple platforms, a shared schedule helps teams avoid flooding supporters. One organization caps email at three messages per person per week.
• Use suppression lists: Suppression lists help keep the wrong people out of a send and reduce unsubscribes.
• Let your data shape the journey: What you know about your constituents should inform the segments, messages, and timing of your marketing journeys.
• Refresh templates regularly: Email templates need ongoing review and maintenance to stay accurate and effective.
• Share the responsibility: Responsible engagement involves many stakeholders, from journey building and template upkeep to reviewing automations.

Looking Ahead

NPSP Day San Francisco was a reminder that nobody has Salesforce completely figured out, and that's okay. The most useful moments came when someone described a problem, and three other people in the room said, "We tried this, and here's what happened."

Whether it's a well-written SOP, a cleaner dashboard, or a thoughtful AI policy, the goal is the same: systems that work for the people who use them and the communities they serve.

A huge thank you to everyone who came ready to share, ask questions, and help one another. Thank you again to Idlewild Partners and Data Geeks Lab for sponsoring the event, and to Michelle and the team at SPUR for hosting us at the Urban Center.

Keep the Community Going

Eager for more? There are still a few chances to connect with the nonprofit Salesforce community in 2026!

Upcoming NPSP Days

• NPSP Day Minneapolis: October 22, 2026
• NPSP Day Washington, DC: October 29, 2026
• NPSP Day Philadelphia: November 5, 2026

Check out the full NPSP Day events calendar for upcoming events and more opportunities to connect with the community. You can also read recaps from other recent events: NPSP Day New York, NPSP Day Chicago, NPSP Day Oakland, and NPSP Day Boston.