When considering whether to adopt Salesforce's Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) or Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) or migrate from NPSP to NPC, several key factors should be evaluated.
Within the differences between the various platforms, key things to consider include your current solution or workflow, other priorities, and your team, timeline, and budget. The right choice depends on your current setup, long-term vision, and available resources.
This guide outlines some major considerations to help you make an informed decision that will serve your organization.
Why NPSP and NPC?
NPSP and NPC are designed for different types of organizations. NPSP is valuable for smaller, less complex orgs, while NPC is geared for larger nonprofits or nonprofits that want to scale and expand.
We outline some technical differences in our post on NPC vs. NPSP. These differentiators include workflow and operational areas, data models, automation, permissions, reports, and compatibility with third-party apps.
The rest of this guide will focus on five organizational considerations that are worth thinking through as you look to implement or migrate to NPSP/NPC.
1. Current Solution/Workflow
A large part of deciding what solution to use involves analyzing what you currently have.
If you have NPSP and are considering NPC, why? What problems would NPC solve? What would NPC support in the future that NPSP can’t?
If you don’t have a Salesforce-based solution, what about the platform would make life easier? Do you want to integrate data, report on it, or analyze it? What workflows or processes would it support or automate?
Part of auditing what you currently use is any custom work done either in Salesforce or your current solution.
It’s worth considering migrating that custom work, how it would subsequently look or function, if it shouldn’t be migrated, or if a process needs revising instead of migration.
2. Priorities
Evaluating priorities for any business initiative encompasses the priorities that the initiative supports and adjacent priorities separate from the project.
Does implementing or moving to a new platform provide tangible benefits? Can you quantify the impact that a new solution will bring?
It’s essential to be specific. Rather than a generic goal (for example, “updating a system”), a solution should have concrete benefits that address real needs in your organization.
Would other priorities need to be rearranged or deprioritized? Would this be temporary and time-bound or should they be deprioritized indefinitely? Can your organization still accomplish the necessary priorities alongside this new project?
3. Team
Accurately evaluate your team’s abilities and resources before starting a migration or implementation. If they don’t have the skillset to accomplish it, consider augmenting the team or adjusting the project.
Also ensure you have the right people on the project. They should be competent, clear communicators, give effective feedback, and see the project through to the end. Enlist a variety of roles, from corporate sponsor to power users and everyone in between.
You may enlist an external team to supplement the project. A partner can be a valuable knowledge source, help with implementation and configuration, and save time.
However, using a partner requires the investment of time and budget. Finding and vetting a partner that can give you a good return on that investment can take time.
4. Timeline
Given your unique organizational needs, how long do you expect the migration or implementation to take? How long should it take?
Be sure you’re factoring adequate time for discovery, building, testing, refinement, and data migration (which is a good time to consider fixing your bad data!).
Consider the timing and whether it should be planned further in advance. Especially if you’re considering NPC at the end of your fiscal year or during an event-focused or initiative-focused season, like a yearly fundraising event, the timing should align with organizational goals.
5. Budget
While budget is a critical facet of the discussion, it should come after the considerations listed above. If those aren’t in place, the budget will inevitably be negatively affected.
Nonprofits can get ten free licenses for either NPSP or NPC. If you need additional licenses, NPC will be more expensive than those for NPSP.
You will also need to determine if you will need more licenses. Unlike NPSP, platform (or “lightning platform”) licenses aren’t available in NPC. You’ll most likely need to grant those users a full license instead.
If you use a partner to help implement or migrate your Salesforce instance, they will need to build in time for discovery, building, testing, and possibly data import. Moving processes to Salesforce as part of the implementation or migration will also require time.
Making the Choice
Choosing a Salesforce tool for your nonprofit is a strategic and technical decision. Carefully evaluating your current workflows, priorities, team capabilities, timeline, and budget ensures a smoother transition and better long-term outcomes.
While both platforms offer powerful nonprofit management tools, the best solution is the one that aligns with your organization's needs today and where you want to go in the future.