Salesforce Nonprofit Summit 2021: Try Innovative New Things

HomeKeeper attended the Salesforce’s inaugural Nonprofit Summit, online on April 21,2021. Here’s some of our favorite sessions and takeaways!

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Session: “Less is More: How Small and Federated Organizations Deliver BIG Results!”

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Image credit Salesforce.org

In this session, nonprofit Beneath The Waves spoke about the benefits of receiving a Salesforce Pro Bono services, but in addition stressed the value of data migration when adapting a new system. The nonprofit staff knew the data, so they described how much work they had to do to clean and prepare their data for complimentary import by their Pro Bono volunteer. This was just one facet of their successful technical adoption. (Check out HomeKeeper’s article Questions to Consider Importing or Updating Multiple Records)

Also in “Less is More” session, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America spoke about scaling across their network of agencies. For HomeKeeper participating organizations, a lot of the planning and maintenance work has been done for you, since we are a Salesforce managed package developed with housing professionals in the room, and published on the Salesforce AppExchange.

Session: “Building a Data Strategy for Digital Transformation”

Presenters included Urban Institute. Our key takeaways:

  • Invest in mission-driven tech savvy people.
  • Give your people the power to try new things and drive impact.
  • Be picky about which technologies are the best fit – but invest fully. This allows for experimenting and more as the opportunities present themselves!
  • Don’t aim for “perfect” in digital transformation – Go with something that has potential to expand and customize – this is why Urban Institute chose Salesforce. This is a guiding development principal for HomeKeeper.

Worth a Look

Several sessions mention the concept of “technical debt”, for example if you build a quick solution for an emergency relief program – that might be complicated to connect to other technical solutions, later. Like credit card debt, or a mortgage, it is expected that every organization will acquire technical debt. But again like credit cards or mortgages, if you never pay any of it – it might be more complicated to deal with, later. HomeKeeper and our developer, DaizyLogik, regularly visit our technical debt to try and “pay” it before its “due”!

The nonprofit Amplify was featured at the Nonprofit Summit, including the session “Amplifying Underrepresented Voices in Tech”. Focusing on the Salesforce community, Amplify empowers underrepresented voices in technology and those who support them to be fearless leaders.

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