If you’re a nonprofit using Salesforce, chances are you are looking for strategies for increasing user adoption among staff at your organization. One element of this is solid training of staff that allows them to understand some essential concepts and get their hands dirty.

But how does one do that effectively and efficiently, and make sure the training sticks? This was a question we were bandying about at the Salesforce.com Nonprofit Starter Pack developer sprint.

Naturally, I thought of Van Halen.

If this year will be your first time at Salesforce's Dreamforce, don't worry, you're likely to have a lot of non-profit friends in the same boat. With more than 70,000 attendees expected this year, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the sea of humanity crashing downtown San Francisco for the cloud party of the year.

Here's a simple checklist of some of my top ways to make the most out of your Dreamforce experience (and yes, it's not a conference, it's an "experience").

Data cleanliness and data integrity.  Ah, such fun things to work on, right?  Kind of like spring cleaning, but for some reason all the more frustratingly painful.  Since spring is coming early here in North America, we thought it could be useful to share some new insights we've had on this topic of data cleanliness, especially for inbound data to Salesforce.

A few of us penguins worked through this last night and today as we're gearing up for a new release of our Soapbox Engage products, and I thought I'd share some of the highlights of a good brainstorming session that could be useful for others thinking about matching rules.

Our discussions generally broke down into three main areas:

1) Matching scenarios to keep in mind

2) Matching rules

3) Data updating rules

Let's dive in to our best practices...

As a B Corp, PICnet puts an emphasis on people, environment, and then profits.  We have higher legal standards and must meet comprehensive social and environmental standards.  For many businesses, this school of thinking might be backward, but for B Corps, it’s a part of our vision and goals. There are more than 450 B Corporations in 60 various industries across the United States and Europe.  PICnet was proud to become a B Corp in April of 2010.

So it makes perfect sense that as a B Corp, we support other B Corporations whose similarly-minded business models fit in so perfectly with ours. When I learned about Give Something Back, a fellow B Corporation that offers office supplies at a cheaper rate than the average office supply chain, I jumped at the chance to purchase and help support a fellow B Corp. What I found is that the products were not only much cheaper, but I also received free shipping AND had them delivered next day.

Sounds great so far, right? Here's the kicker: Give Something Back donates 75% of their profits to their community; that is 75x the national corporate giving average! They've been changing the game since 1991 and were one of the founding B Corps.