Guide to Salesforce NPSP Soft Credits

One of the biggest complaints you will hear when nonprofits switch from almost any other donor system to Salesforce, is no doubt how the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) deals with soft credits. This is because while other donor management systems track soft credits and hard credits in one table, Salesforce tracks them in four separate objects. 

Through the years I have created some ways to ease nonprofits’ frustrations around this particular topic, and here are some of my best tips for how to handle soft credits in Salesforce.

What Are Soft Credits?

The Nonprofit Success Pack comes with features that help nonprofits track soft credits – a use case that only nonprofits have.

Traditionally, a soft credit means giving credit for a donation to a contact that did not actually make it, but may have somehow influenced it. In Salesforce, this is extended to more than just influencers.

Soft Credits in Salesforce are tracked in three different objects:

• Contact Role Soft Credits
• Partial Soft Credits
• Account Soft Credits

Below are three scenarios where each may be used.

Scenario #1: Donor Advised Funds (DAF)

A DAF is a charitable investment account, for the sole purpose of supporting charitable organizations you care about.

Contact Role Soft Credits

When someone contributes cash or securities to a DAF at a public charity, like Fidelity Charitable, they are generally eligible to take an immediate tax deduction. Then, those funds can be invested for tax-free growth and you can donate grants to virtually any IRS-qualified public charity.

Typically, a company like Fidelity receives a “hard credit” and is listed in the account field on an opportunity in Salesforce. The primary contact can then receive soft credit for the donation via the contact role. 

In this example, Donald Duck receives a soft credit. Soft credits can also be given to an influencer as a gift like a board member through a contact role soft credit.

These soft credits also roll up to the contact who is given the soft credit. The fields filled in for Donald Duck’s rollups are included below.

Scenario #2: Third-Party Platforms

This refers to donations made on third party platforms like external websites or social media.

Partial Soft Credits

Platforms like Facebook have the ability for users to create fundraisers for various nonprofits.  Oftentimes, Facebook sends one check for multiple donors that gave to a cause. Along with the check, Facebook will provide a list of the donors who gave permission for their information to be distributed with their contact information, and the amount of the gift each individual made.

Each individual can receive a Partial Soft Credit for their part of the donation.

Scenario #3: Individual Gifts Influenced by a Partner Organization

Here are a couple of examples where donations/gifts are made by an individual but are influenced by an organization.

Account Soft Credits

Lions Club International Foundation (LCIF) is a foundation that supports various program initiatives. They receive much of their support from Lions Clubs and Lions Club Members.

Lions Club Members may give individually to LCIF, but the Lions Club that they are a member of can receive an Account Soft Credit, because they would be less likely to give if they were not influenced by being a member of the Lions Club.

Let’s look at another example. The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCan) is dedicated to fighting pancreatic cancer. They hold fundraising walk events every year.

A walker/donor may be fundraising as part of a team. The team may be part of a corporate/business team, and even though an individual is contributing, the donation is influenced by the business. The business should receive an Account Soft Credit. In this example, BIM Designs Inc would receive the credit.

Why Do Soft Credits Matter to Fundraisers and Marketers?

If a check comes in from Fidelity Charitable Fund, the account name on the opportunity is Fidelity Charitable Fund. The nonprofit needs to cultivate the donor behind the fund. That means they want to email and call them to thank them for their donation, and they may even want to invite them to lunch or a more private gathering if they have the potential to be a larger donor.

What’s the Problem?

As part of the Nonprofit Success Pack, Salesforce comes with built-in custom roll up fields for tracking donations. These include Total Gifts, Last Gift Date, and Last Gift Amount to name a few. However, these only rollup HARD credits. There are also built-in soft credit rollups on the contact object – you saw them in Donald Duck’s example when we looked at Contact Role Soft Credits.

Fundraisers don’t just want to see people at the individual level – they want to get to know them at the family level. Thank you notes to Donald will be addressed to Donald AND Daisy Duck.

If we go to the Duck Household account rather than Donald Duck’s contact record, it shows $2,000 in total gifts and only two related opportunities! It is a pretty drastic difference between a household giving $52,000 vs. $2,000. In the screenshot below of the standard NPSP roll ups, you can see that 18 are based on hard credits.

Ways to Solve This

Truthfully, there aren’t tons of good options, but some that I have come up with have saved me a lot of headaches and minimized hours of Excel work I would have had to do. One of these ways is learning to create NPSP Customizable Rollups can allow you to create additional fields and add them together through a formula.  

Customizable rollups are similar to standard Salesforce rollups but are a special function in NPSP used to roll up donation records.

You can see in the example above that a customizable rollup is made of a Target Object, Target Field, Operation, Time Frame, Rollup Type, Filter Group, and Amount field.  

This example creates Total Contact Soft Credits at the account level, which will roll up both partial and full soft credits. If you create this as well as a Total Account Soft Credits Rollup, you can then create a formula field to add the standard Total Gifts field and the two new rollups together called Total Gifts Soft and Hard.

You can download the how-to guide here for creating the formula for Total Gifts Soft and Hard.

Summary

In essence, soft credits are a way to recognize the indirect contributions made by individuals or organizations that are not the direct donors. Understanding where donations come from is important to nonprofits, so making use of this feature can really help when it comes to offering rewards, saying thank you, and building up a loyal donor base.