Case study · Nonprofit Cloud for a charity
Three spreadsheets became one fundraising system.
Every total matched the charity’s own book to the penny.
A community charity in the east of England, 10 to 15 staff, funded by contracts, grants and giving, tracked its applications and money in colour coded spreadsheets. I built its fundraising on Nonprofit Cloud, moved the money history in and checked every total against its own workbook.
This is for you if your charity tracks bids, promises and payments in spreadsheets and nobody can say which programme a payment was for.
Built in the charity’s sandbox, August to September 2026. The charity is not named and none of its figures are published: a client’s money and records stay the client’s. Reviewed 27 October 2026.
What changed
What changed for the charity?
Before: three spreadsheets, status in cell colours, money promised and received in different places. Built: one system for applications, promises, payments and the committee. Now: income by type and by programme is reported in the sandbox from figures already checked against its own book, before the system goes live.
3 → 1
three overlapping spreadsheets replaced by one fundraising system, on the charity’s own stages
3 of 3
totals checked against the charity’s own workbook before any dashboard was shown: received, expected and promised, each to the penny
0
emails sent to donors during any data load, counted after every step
Every payment
carries its split across programmes, so programme income is a stored figure rather than a guess
What was built
Five changes, each one replacing a habit.
Applications, promises and payments in one place
An application runs through the charity’s stages. When it is awarded, one button records the promise, its schedule and the split across programmes in a single pass.
The investment committee scores inside Salesforce
Nine criteria, a minimum number of scores before an application moves, named members who must score, and a deadline. Members without a Salesforce login score through a form.
Income type on every promise
Contract, grant, open market or gift is a required answer when money is recorded, and it travels onto each payment, because a diversification report counts money received.
A declined application cannot carry money
Declining removes the money records underneath in the order the platform requires, and keeps anything already received. Validation catches every other route, including data loads.
Thank-you letters and alerts that read settings
Letters go once per payment through the native fields. Alerts for large gifts, overdue payments and closing deadlines read their thresholds from a settings record, so changing them needs no release.
The decisions that mattered
Which decisions are usually made the other way?
Three choices that are often made the other way, and what goes wrong when they are.
One object for the application, another for the money
It is tempting to pick one. Run everything on opportunities and the native giving reports see nothing; run everything on Nonprofit Cloud’s gift records and there is no pipeline before money exists. Here the application lives on the opportunity and the money on the gift records, joined by one button, so both reports work.
The programme split written where the money is
Salesforce’s own Trailhead module, read on 27 October 2026, says a payment inherits the split of its promise. Tested on both steps, it inherits nothing unless the payment is entered through Gift Entry, which this charity does not use. Trusting the documentation would have left programme income at zero with no error anywhere. The pattern that fixes it.
The charity’s financial year kept out of the org setting
The charity reports April to March; the org’s fiscal year starts in January. Changing that on a live org is not a harmless setting, because forecasts and quotas are built on its periods. So the April year lives in formula fields on the payment and rolls over by itself every first of April, with no report to edit.
What charities ask first
Three questions before you start
We cannot afford a consultant.
Through its Power of Us programme, Salesforce gives eligible nonprofits ten Nonprofit Cloud licences at no cost, according to its nonprofit pricing page, read on 27 October 2026. So the work is the cost, and it comes in phases. Fundraising essentials is 70 hours, €4,550 fixed; committee scoring, migration and funder reporting are agreed one phase at a time. A grant-ready scope to attach to a funding application is free.
Our data is a mess of spreadsheets.
So was this charity’s. Status lived in cell colours and fund holders were listed twice. The source was cleaned and every total reconciled to the charity’s own workbook before anyone saw a dashboard built on it.
Our staff and trustees are not technical.
The stages are the charity’s own, money is recorded through guided screens rather than raw records, and committee members who never log in score through a form. Training and 60 days of support come with the first phase.
For your charity
Which parts carry over to another charity?
Any charity with grants, contracts and giving needs the same four things. Income type on every promise, a programme split stored on each payment, a decision process the committee actually uses, and totals reconciled to the finance book before a dashboard is trusted. The stages and the committee’s criteria change from charity to charity; the shape does not.
The first phase is Fundraising essentials, 70 hours, €4,550 fixed on the ten donated licences, with the rest added in phases as funding allows. This charity built its full system the same way.
Serhii Skrypnyk · Senior Salesforce Administrator · 7 Salesforce certifications · on the platform since 2018. Reviewed 27 October 2026.
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