Salesforce launched the new Nonprofit Cloud in 2023, built natively on the core Salesforce platform and designed to take advantage of modern industry features and components. This new solution exists alongside the long-standing Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), which many organizations still use today.
To support this new architecture, Salesforce introduced a new certification: the Salesforce Certified Nonprofit Cloud Consultant (NPC). However, it’s important not to confuse this with the existing Nonprofit Cloud Consultant certification, which focuses on NPSP and related managed packages.
To avoid confusion, Salesforce will rename the original certification in July 2025 to: Salesforce Certified Nonprofit Success Pack Consultant.
Before registering for an exam, make sure you’re studying for the certification that aligns with the platform you work with – whether it’s the new Nonprofit Cloud or the legacy NPSP solution.
About the exam:
- This is a mid-level exam designed for professionals with 2 to 5 years of experience.
- To take the exam, you must have the Salesforce Administrator credential.
- The exam costs $200. If you need to retake the exam, the fee is $100.
Who’s the Ideal Candidate?
A Salesforce Certified Nonprofit Cloud Consultant (NPC) should have experience designing Nonprofit Cloud solutions and be able to lead the implementation of these solutions. You should have experience working in nonprofit organizations and with the core Salesforce platform. A prerequisite for the exam is the Salesforce Administrator certification. You should have the knowledge to implement solutions in the most commonly arising nonprofit organization scenarios.
That being said, you have a good opportunity to ace this exam if:
- You are a Salesforce Administrator working at a nonprofit.
- Going through a Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) implementation.
- Have a good grasp of Salesforce (i.e. 2-5 years as an admin).
- Put in the time and effort to learn about the different solutions available and really drill down into the exam guide and the provided Trailmix.
At the time of writing this article, you only need a passing score of 64%, and that is pretty low. I would just keep in mind that passing the exam doesn’t make you a Nonprofit Cloud expert!
Key Topics
The exam (as of May 2025) has 60 multiple-choice questions, over 105 minutes. The passing score is 64%, requiring a candidate to be successful in 39 out of 60 questions. As with other Salesforce certifications, the exam is all multiple-choice. In this exam, I found all questions to be a choice from three possible answers, with no questions looking for multiple answers.
The exam is made up of four topics with various weightings as detailed below.
Where to Begin?
A good starting point is to take a look at the Prepare for Your Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) Credential Trailmix along with the Salesforce Certified Nonprofit Cloud Consultant (NPC) Exam Guide. Both of these resources will be key for your preparation.
1. Nonprofit Implementation Strategy 11%
This section is the smallest part of the exam and is all about understanding the common requirements, strategies, and business processes of nonprofit organizations. The topics covered are around implementation projects, including the project management lifecycle, vision and value maps, and business value.
You will want to understand some project management essentials, for which there is a Trailhead badge. There is also a great trail – Prepare for Success with Salesforce for Nonprofits – which covers the vision and value mapping, nonprofit readiness, and implementation basics.
2. Solution Design 32%
This section is the second largest on the exam and dives into the key Nonprofit Cloud components. The Trailmix will give you a good understanding of fundraising, program management, outcome management, and grant-making solutions.
There will also be questions on Salesforce platform features and when to choose a third-party solution, so you’ll need to know what best meets a Nonprofit organization’s requirements.
You will also need to dive into the common industry features, for example, Business Processing Engine, Data Processing Engine, Action Plans, and Interest Tags. I found that the exam asked high-level questions on these topics as opposed to in-depth questions on how they are implemented. Understanding which solution meets a given scenario should be sufficient.
3. Nonprofit Cloud Setup 22%
This section covers the basics of the Nonprofit Cloud Setup. Here you are really going to need to understand Stakeholder Management, which includes Person Accounts, relationship objects, and household management. There is a Trailhead badge for Stakeholder Management. Don’t skim through this one! You are really going to want to understand how this works and the different terminology. If you’re more used to NPSP, this is going to be very different, so take your time to really learn all about it.
The newly released Nonprofit Cloud Implementation Guide also goes in some depth into Person Accounts and the different relationship objects. This guide goes into way more depth than you will need for the exam, but is an excellent resource to review and ensure you are aware of when you’re implementing NPC in real life.
As part of this learning, you may also want to take a look at the Entity Relationship Diagrams for the various parts of NPC – again, another real-life, need-to-know item.
Finally, for this section, you will also need to know your security and permissions, as you will also get questions on the different features of Nonprofit Cloud, along with the related permission sets and permission set licenses. Salesforce Help has a whole article on Security and Permissions, with links to the different permission sets for each product area. There is also a good rundown in the appendix at the end of the Nonprofit Cloud Implementation Guide.
4. Nonprofit Cloud Feature Configuration 35%
Saving the biggest section for last, this is the core part of the exam. Here, you will need to know about the biggest feature sets of Nonprofit Cloud and the functionality within them. In the Solution Design section, you made decisions on which feature set to implement. In this section, you need to understand how to do that. Use the Trailmix badges from the Solution Design section and implement these in your NPC org. The key areas to focus on are:
- Fundraising: Gift Entry, Gift Commitments, Soft Credits, Outreach Source Codes, and Gift Acknowledgements.
- Program Management, Case Management, and Outcome Management: Action Plans, Benefits, Care Plans, and Interaction Summaries.
- Grantmaking: Grantmaking Sites and features that support the Grantmaking lifecycle.
The links to the Salesforce help documentation from the Trailmix will also be useful here, as they will take you through some common scenarios, which solution or feature would be needed, and provide further details on how to implement them.
Study Strategy
There is a lot of content to cover, with many specific nonprofit concepts. The Trailmix previously referenced – Prepare for Your Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Consultant (NPC) Credential – will cover the key topics. We’d suggest not just completing the badges, but setting up an org and completing them in a trial org as you go, so that you can really dive into the functionality. You can spin up a Nonprofit Cloud trial org for 30 days of access for free.
We’d also recommend you review the Exam Guide and use this as your master revision list.
Unlike many Salesforce exams, you won’t find a Focus on Force study guide or practice exams, and at the time of publishing this article, I couldn’t find any alternatives. However, by having a good grasp of the key concepts in the Trailmix and the items on the exam guide, you should be good to go.
Exam Strategy
The exam strategy is really the same for any Salesforce certification. You need to use the process of elimination to take out those answers you know are incorrect, and watch out for questions where Salesforce is really trying to test your knowledge and ensure you know the difference between some of the key concepts.
Make sure you use the “Mark for Review” option for questions where you feel unsure so you know to revisit them later (particularly early on in the exam). One tip is that if you really have no idea, just go with the most likely answer and move on. If you don’t know and have no idea, there is little point in marking it for review when you aren’t likely to know by the end of the exam.
Whether you review every question at the end is a personal choice – it depends on how likely you are to change the initial answer you gave!
Resources and Top Tips
- Prepare for Your Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Consultant (NPC) Credential
- Exam Guide
- Nonprofit Cloud Best Practices Community Asset Hub
Final Thoughts
Remember that this exam is aimed at Nonprofit Consultants who are expected to have some experience with the products. Don’t rush the studying – make sure you are comfortable with NPC and understand its differences from NPSP so you don’t get the two mixed up during the exam.
NPC is a large product with several main feature areas and over three dozen Industry Common Components available to it. It will take time to understand them all, and even passing the exam won’t make you a Nonprofit Cloud expert, but it’s a good place to start.
Now, get studying and ace that exam!
