The Salesforce Lightning Experience is a slick new user interface layered on top of your existing Salesforce account that focuses on allowing sales teams (or development and fundraising teams in our nonprofit community) to work and close opportunities faster. It is generally available as a feature that can be enabled by Salesforce administrators starting with the Winter '16 release.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the PUB Crawl! I'll be sharing the top items discussed in the Salesforce Foundation's Power of Us Hub ("PUB"). Why? Well, I'm reading the entire PUB anyway, so I figured, heck why not pass some kernels of knowledge to my amigos?

In late February, Google announced a significant change to its search algorithm. While it usually doesn't talk much about how its crawlers review Web pages, this particular change was worthy of notice because it will affect essentially every website, including one run by your nonprofit. Starting April 21, Google's search algorithm will have greater focus on "mobile friendliness" in determining page rank. In particular, when supporters look for you on their mobile devices, your page rank will be greatly affected by whether your site has a full level of optimization. That means less visitors and fewer people getting interested in your cause if your site isn't optimized. Nonprofit content management tools with mobile device optimization in mind can help you manage this significant change to the way your supporters see you.

This past week, the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival hosted a panel on nonprofit organizations, called "Activism At Its Best." In it, the main question was: What can organizations do to increase online engagement among potential supporters? This is an especially big question when it comes to the one demographic that everyone likes to talk about but nobody seems to grasp: millennials. You can't just coast on your name anymore, especially because there are so many organizations out there that are trying to do what you're doing. Instead, your cause is the focus, since their interest in you is often based on that alone. You have to reach out to them, rather than the other way around. Nonprofit CRM software can assist by giving you better ways to effectively communicate with them.

It can be challenging to handle all the tech roles for your nonprofit. This is especially the case if you were given the role just because you happen to know your way around a computer. You likely want access to a few programs that will make it easier for you to manage your constituent and volunteer data. A reliable nonprofit CRM can help you with the most important tasks, such as managing donations and events, and with Salesforce as that CRM, you have at your disposal a great many apps that can make your job even easier. Here are two free apps that can aid with some of the tasks that come with running the technical side of your organization.

When working multiple tech roles, free nonprofit apps always help.