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Every few months, I get an email introduction to someone who has a wonderful idea for building a Salesforce app to support their national non-profit network, chapter organization, collaborative or other sector-wide initiative. The case for a replicable Salesforce solution is always compelling and the potential for scaling meaningful change in our communities is inspiring.<\/span><\/p>\n Typically there\u2019s excitement and optimism in their voice as they describe their vision or project they\u2019re hoping will be broadly adopted, become financially self-sustaining, and transform their sector. \u00a0But while they may have come to me with a list of questions, eagerly looking for inspiration or a referral to a developer, I often find myself asking my own questions, and offering a reality check instead of a roadmap. <\/span><\/p>\n Why do I get these emails? In 2010, I was hired as a part-time consultant to help with a \u201csmall data project\u201d for the affordable housing sector. Until that point, my professional background was primarily in affordable housing development and community economic development programs. \u00a0I got my advanced degree in city planning when others in my generation were booming and busting in nearby Silicon Valley. To be clear, I never intended to become a non-profit app builder. <\/span><\/p>\n I had barely started my Salesforce journey when our team made the decision to build and scale a Salesforce managed package for our nonprofit affordable housing network. We knew what we wanted, but not how to get there. Thankfully, we were guided by the wisdom of Rem Hoffman, (Exponent Partners), Sara Chieco (now at Presence Product Group), Brad Struss (Bigger Boat Consulting), Kevin Bromer and Laura Meerkatz (both now at Salesforce.org).<\/span><\/p>\n Fast forward to today, I\u2019m still working on that – now very large – data project. I manage the HomeKeeper program at Grounded Solutions Network, a national nonprofit membership organization that brings together an extensive network of partners and member practitioners from local communities, including community land trusts, shared equity housing program, and local housing agencies. <\/span><\/p>\n HomeKeeper is a Salesforce \u201capp,\u201d \u00a0in use by a growing community of over 65 organizations and is the only app for homeownership and housing counseling programs in the Salesforce Appexchange, the marketplace for apps built on the Salesforce platform. <\/span><\/p>\n Our HomeKeeper program now spans a large data ecosystem including two\u00a0<\/span>managed packages<\/span><\/a>, middleware, the <\/span>HomeKeeper National Data Hub<\/span><\/a> (our data warehouse), <\/span>public interactive dashboards<\/span><\/a>, and <\/span>peer benchmarking reports<\/span><\/a>. We have a team of 3 full-time staff and partner with DaizyLogik as our lead developer.<\/span><\/p>\n Over the years, I\u2019ve learned a lot about what it takes develop and distribute an app. \u00a0And I\u2019ve noticed I\u2019ve started asking the same set of questions to folks I meet considering the a similar path. I\u2019ve pulled together this list in an effort to help others gain a much deeper understanding of what decisions, challenges and opportunities may lie ahead. \u00a0Use these questions to help you plan and assess your readiness and capacity for taking on a long-term technology project. Discuss these with your team and leadership and see where the conversations lead you.<\/span><\/p>\n There are a lot of good reasons to pursue a sector-wide technology initiative, so the first task is to clearly articulate why your organization wants to be in the business of creating technology solutions for other nonprofits. Review this list with your team and stakeholders and prioritize your top goals given your organizational mission, vision and capacity.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to build a solution from the start that meets the needs of multiple audiences, each with their own set of priorities. So take a moment and ask your team, \u201cWho are we primarily building this for?\u201d Review these possible audiences and think through their biggest pain points. What systems are they currently using, and how\u2019s it working for them? <\/span><\/p>\n As noted above, harnessing a \u201cMarket Opportunity\u201d should not be one of your top goals because it\u2019s unlikely you\u2019ll be able to recoup your initial investment and all of your operating subsidies. \u00a0Let\u2019s assume you\u2019ll need some startup funds for your initial product planning, initial build out, and testing phase. And you probably won\u2019t earn enough revenue to cover all of your costs (primarily staffing, development consulting fees, and overhead) for the first year. Or two. Or three. <\/span><\/p>\n So what\u2019s your plan to cover your one-time and ongoing expenses in the meantime? If you\u2019re project is primarily about collecting social impact data, consider the <\/span>various business models<\/span><\/a> that might support your efforts. Estimate how many users you will you need to become self-sustaining, and assume the product development, sales and on-boarding process will take longer than you think. In fact, assume everything will take longer than you think, including achieving sustainability. <\/span><\/p>\n Are your funders patient and flexible and do they understand your short-term needs and long-term vision? Do you have a supporting executive team and board leadership, that can help with fund development and sustainability planning? <\/span><\/p>\n Early on, you will be well served to establish relationships and set clear expectations with a core group of organizations planning on using your product. Ideally, you or someone on your team has actually worked in the role of prototypical user. If that\u2019s not the case, this group of core advisors are even more essential. \u00a0They will help provide guidance, input, and feedback which is particularly valuable in the early phases of development. \u00a0Think through these questions to better define your roles and relationships.<\/span><\/p>\n Knowing how you are going to share your solution with others is one of the most critical and early decisions you\u2019ll need to make. There are two common ways of distributing your solution: a Salesforce managed package, or a single org instance. Which one should you choose? \u00a0It depends. \u00a0If neither is a perfect fit, look for other opportunities to layer in other solutions such as Salesforce Communities to meet your goals.<\/span><\/p>\n An app, or \u201cmanaged package\u201d in Salesforce-speak is what I call a \u201cone-for-each\u201d setup. Each participating organization gets their own Salesforce account, or \u201cinstance\u201d, and installs your app. Each organization has control over their own account, and has the flexibility to add features, additional customizations, or other apps. The app is upgradeable, so you can push out new versions and features to users, but the data for each organization is stored separately. <\/span><\/p>\n The other options is what I call the \u201call-in-one\u201d setup. You build one custom solution in your one account, and your participating organizations log-in to submit, enter and\/or manage their data. While the initial setup may be easier than developing a managed package, organizations are not easily able to connect this data to their own instance or data systems because data from all the participating organizations is stored in one place. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Note: Salesforce also has an Unmanaged Package feature, but this route may not be advisable if you are planning on scaling a technical solution to multiple non-profits and making updates over time. Features are not upgradeable in this scenario, and any changes to the base application must be made individually to all the users manually. <\/span><\/p>\n If you are collecting standard reports or datasets from participating organizations, you\u2019ll also need to include additional controls and features into your app to ensure records are complete, correct, and consistently entered in accordance with your data standards.<\/span><\/p>\n If your users are using your managed package app, they will be managing their data in their own instance or system and you\u2019ll need to build an integration to centralize the data. For example, in addition to building our HomeKeeper App, we also built the HomeKeeper National Data Hub to aggregate the data from our users, and an integration process using middleware technology – to pull data from the participating organizations and push it into our Hub. If your organizations are logging into a single system, data aggregation is much simpler.<\/span><\/p>\n If the answer is yes, then estimate your potential workload, budget and timeline to build your solution, and then double it. Or to be safe, triple it.<\/span><\/p>\n While sector-wide reporting may seem to be the same project as building a shared measurement or data collection system, or aggregating data from users, cross-site reporting requires another layer of complexity. \u00a0You will have the additional task of analyzing the data you\u2019ve aggregated, developing meaningful metrics, and building out a way to share publically accessible reports and dashboards.<\/span><\/p>\n If you decide to add the additional feature of peer-benchmarking, your participating organizations can compare their outcomes to their peers. This can provide valuable insight, but will make your project even more complex.<\/span><\/p>\n Building an app takes one set of expertise, but supporting your app creates additional \u00a0ongoing staffing demands. Do you have a product owner who can set the vision for the product or program, prioritize new features, and manage the overall team of advisors, developers and consultants? Is it someone who comes from the field or understands the challenges of end users, and has some sector knowledge? You will likely need additional staff to fulfill key roles:<\/span><\/p>\n Assuming your organization has ownership over the product development process, Who will own your solution? Will you create a new business or nonprofit entity to own your solution, or will it be a program, a product, or an initiative of your existing non-profit? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Regardless of what approach, you\u2019re going to need a team of experts to help you navigate through the process of developing and sharing a technical solution. Here\u2019s a short list of some of the folks you\u2019ll want on your team. If you don\u2019t already have these skillsets in your organization, don\u2019t forget to budget for these third-party contracts.<\/span><\/p>\n Being an accidental admin is one thing. But becoming an accidental app developer comes with a whole new level of risk and responsibility. Developing a technology product and supporting program for multiple organizations will require a strong lead organization and a long-term commitment. <\/span><\/p>\n Hopefully these questions have helped you assess your organizational capacity, your project budget, and your team\u2019s skill sets. Doing some early discovery now before you get too invested in the project will help you better plan your staffing needs, set appropriate expectations, and build better consensus around the definition of success for your project. <\/span><\/p>\n Lastly, remember that you are not alone. There\u2019s a wonderful community of nonprofit Salesforce folks in the Power of Us Hub and there\u2019s even a <\/span>group to bring together individuals pursuing similar large-scale initiatives<\/span><\/a>. Learn from our <\/span>HomeKeeper story<\/span><\/a> and others, like College Forward, TaroWorks, and Hands on Connect, that have already blazed this trail. Find a m<\/span>entor and talk to peers with similar projects that can help light the way with guidance and inspiration<\/p>\n Just as there is no road map, there is no one right way to proceed with building your sector-wide solution. But by asking the right questions and learning from others, you will be well prepared for the journey ahead.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 10 big questions to discuss with your team. Every few months, I get an email introduction to someone who has a wonderful idea for building a Salesforce app to support their national non-profit network, chapter organization, collaborative or other sector-wide initiative. The case for a replicable Salesforce solution is always compelling and the potential for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myhomekeeper.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Becoming an Accidental App Builder<\/h3>\n
Get Started by asking these questions.<\/h3>\n
1. What are you hoping to accomplish? <\/b><\/h3>\n
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2. Who are you building this for?<\/b><\/h3>\n
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3. Do you have patient funders and a sustainable financial model?<\/b><\/h3>\n
4. What is or will be your relationship with participating organizations that will use your solution? <\/b><\/h3>\n
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5. How will you distribute your solution?<\/b><\/h3>\n
6. Will you be aggregating data from your users?<\/b><\/h3>\n
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7. Are you reporting on impact and metrics across multiple programs? <\/b><\/h3>\n
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8. How will you staff and support your app? <\/b><\/h3>\n
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9. What is the ownership model and governance structure? <\/b><\/h3>\n
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10. Who will be on your team?<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Find your path forward.<\/h3>\n