If you're looking to import data into Salesforce for your nonprofit organization, there are a number of training resources you have at your disposal from Salesforce.com and the Salesforce.com Foundation.

One emerging approach we’ve witnessed in the nonprofit space is the manner of Salesforce adoption within organizations. Many organizations are taking a segmented approach to adoption with one department electing to use it and others not. Often the split falls between program and fundraising teams.

There are obvious reasons for this. Legacy systems are involved that vary from department to department. The reasons inspiring adoption by one team will not necessarily apply to the other. Change is difficult for one department let alone an entire organization. And Salesforce adoption is often driven by a key champion within the organization affecting a single department first rather than the entire organization.

Photo: dsearls on Flickr

While the reasons for segmented adoption are clear, here are four compelling reasons why organizations would do well to push further to more comprehensive adoption and break out of their data silos:

If you're using Salesforce to track donations, you can generate plenty of helpful fundraising metrics. These can be done across your organization and per fundraising campaign. We'll focus on five common and critical metrics in this post.