This weekend, I was looking up from the base of the final climb up Yosemite's Half Dome and thought to myself, "this is probably pretty stupid". I geared up with a pair of gloves, and for 20 minutes, I was forced, by sheer gravity, to stop thinking about Salesforce best practices for handling accrual accounting and focus on not sliding off the granite.

When I reached the top, and finished kissing the ground, I had a chance to soak in the view from the rooftop of the valley. It was amazing, and it didn't require any Internet connection to make it happen (I checked).

We're living in this always-connected, cloud-run world, and sometimes, we miss the beauty around us. So, while you're diving into the knowledge sharing from the community this week, think about taking that small break your mind needs to recharge and refocus. If you're heading to Dreamforce in a few weeks, you'll need all the defragmented brain storage you can get.

Let's dive in, shall we?

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For a full rundown of other new donor Salesforce recipes along with a presentation of new donor acquisition strategies, watch our free webinar, Win New Donors this End-of-Year Fundraising Season.

It’s officially autumn in Washington DC, but the heat certainly makes it feel like the middle of July. That, coupled with the growing lines at my nearby coffee shop for anything pumpkin related, has me thoroughly confused as to the season.

Meanwhile, a group of us braved the heat in DC and enjoyed the second edition of the NPSP Day Washington DC, our first NPSP Day redux. Successful community engagement (and burritos) in the shadow of the US capitol certainly provided a shining moment in DC.

To top off the changing of the seasons, the non-profit community just proudly added a new handful of gurus to the Salesforce MVP mix! So, without further ado, let's keep this knowledge sharing flowing. Grab an iced (pumpkin spice?) latte, and enjoy this week’s PUB Crawl.

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NPSP Sprint Baltimore 2017

I need to apologize to Kevin Bromer.

Kevin is the Vice President of Product Delivery at Salesforce.org. He's also the father of the Nonprofit Success Pack. We chatted between sessions at the NPSP Community Sprint in Baltimore this March. I was participating in a breakout group led by Megan Himan of BrightStep Partners and Dean Graham of Wombat Works tackling issues around User Defined Rollups in the NPSP when I learned about a limitation. I told Kevin in no uncertain terms that this limitation of User Defined Rollups made them virtually useless.

I was wrong.

After a few weeks on the road, it was great to wrap it all up with a day networking with the NPSP open source community in Boston last Friday. Working under the gazing eyes of President Roosevelt and other gorgeous artwork, Harvard put on a great show!

With another round of empowered community contributors joining the NPSP Day movement, I'm excited to bring the energy back to Washington DC tomorrow for our first repeat city. After all the long-distance travel for me recently, it's fitting that the commute will be just two blocks tomorrow!

If you can't join us in DC tomorrow, let me nourish your brain with a tall glass of Salesforce community knowledge. Order's up!

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