Efficient event management is crucial for nonprofits to maximize their outreach and fundraising efforts. Salesforce offers powerful tools to help streamline these processes, ensuring nonprofits can focus on their mission.
This article explores how nonprofits can leverage Salesforce to manage events effectively. Whether you’re looking to connect campaigns and donations to your CRM or are keen to learn more about event management with Salesforce, read on.
How Salesforce Can Help Manage Events
Hosting events like concerts, galas, and conventions is a fantastic way for nonprofits to raise funds and increase their visibility. However, managing these events can be administratively challenging. Salesforce simplifies these processes by centralizing attendee data, providing deep insights into clients and donors, and enabling decisive action based on a single source of truth.
Since 2016, Salesforce’s Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) has offered valuable pre-built features for managing events and funds. In March 2023, Salesforce announced its new Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) solution, which as of Salesforce’s Spring ‘24 release has added functionalities making it an even more robust option than NPSP. For example, NPC can auto-generate URLs to measure the efficacy of event campaigns. NPC also offers compatibility with Experience Cloud, perfect for nonprofits wanting to build portals for their events.
Salesforce for Nonprofit Event Management
There are several benefits of using Salesforce for nonprofit event management, including:
- Centralized Data: Easily view who is attending your event, tickets sold, revenue generated, and campaign efficacy.
- Intuitive Dashboards: Track fundraising progress and forecast future efforts with the recurring donations feature.
- Personalized Communication: Send customized emails and invitations to attendees, synced with your existing programs for a comprehensive view.
Salesforce Event Registration: Challenges and Solutions
Despite the obvious benefits, there are several challenges for nonprofits managing event registrations and tickets with Salesforce.
Challenge 1: Event Registration Forms
One of the easiest ways for attendees to sign up for events is via a fillable online form synced with Salesforce. One problem is Salesforce’s web-to-lead forms are not compatible with all CRM objects. Robust form-building capabilities that automatically create records in Salesforce are only possible via a third-party tool or custom development.
Challenge 2: Managing Payments
Another aspect of successfully managing an event and selling tickets is integrating your Salesforce with payments. This is so event tickets can be purchased securely and online donations can be made while syncing to your CRM. NPSP and NPC do not support processing payments within Salesforce. Commerce Cloud does enable organizations to sell tickets but it’s an expensive option for nonprofits. Again, a third-party tool or coding is required to implement secure payments.
Challenge 3: Campaign Management
Another aspect of event management for nonprofits is linking event registration forms and payments to campaigns. NPSP, NPC, and Salesforce in general do provide capabilities for tracking campaigns but it’s challenging to connect this to registration forms or Commerce Cloud unless you have a development resource.
Challenge 4: Salesforce Integration
Overall, integrating your client, donor, and volunteer data with Salesforce is not always a seamless process. If you want records updated in real-time via online forms, commerce sites, and more, then it’s highly likely you’ll have to implement custom coding.
Challenge 5: Creating an Event Portal
It’s advantageous for nonprofits to manage event registrations and ticket sales via a website or portal. It empowers end users with self-service options to follow up on their purchases. To do this with Salesforce, your best option is Experience Cloud. Experience Cloud gives you the ability to make beautiful portals fully integrated with your nonprofit data and event management system.
Another perk of Experience Cloud is that it’s compatible with NPC and several ready-to-go templates require low code (or no code) to set up. One issue with Experience Cloud is the pricing. Nonprofit organizations will have to pay per login or member. Depending on the number of users a portal has, this can add up. In addition, there will almost inevitably be development costs linking this portal to event registration forms and payments.
Salesforce has everything nonprofits need to manage events. However, linking forms, payments, campaigns, and portals to your CRM can become pricey and involve development work. So, what are the alternatives?
Titan’s All-in-One Solution
One option for nonprofits looking to manage events is shopping around for a third-party solution on the AppExchange. While there are many stellar solutions, Titan stands out for its ability to help nonprofits build the Salesforce event registration process using only drag-and-drop tools. This includes forms, payments, campaigns, and portals fully synced to Salesforce. Here are some features of Titan’s event management solution for nonprofits:
- Event Registration Form: Automatically create primary contacts in Salesforce and link to opportunities without duplicates. This can also create additional contacts linked to opportunity contact roles. Zero duplicates are created in Salesforce.
- Quick Payments: Secure payment processing directly through registration forms, with transaction data updated in real time.
- Donations: Donors can choose to make donations via this form, and all data will be updated.
- Campaign Management: Convert registrants into contacts and link them to relevant campaigns.
- No-Code Portals: Build self-service portals for attendees to track tickets and donation details, saving nonprofits hours of manual work.
Summary: Event Registration Process Management
While Salesforce offers robust tools for storing, viewing, and managing data, it can be complicated to set up end-to-end event management for nonprofits with native tools. To overcome these challenges, nonprofits will need to explore custom development or leverage a third-party AppExchange tool. Ultimately, the choice is yours!