Choosing the right Salesforce solution for your nonprofit is a critical decision that impacts operations, fundraising, and long-term sustainability.
With the introduction of Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) in 2023, organizations now face a choice between the long-standing Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) and this newer, more robust platform.
While both options offer powerful tools tailored to nonprofit needs, their structures, costs, and functionalities differ significantly.
Understanding these differences can help your organization determine which solution aligns best with your mission, budget, and growth plans.
What are NPSP and NPC?
NPSP was released as a “starter pack” in 2008 that grew within the nonprofit community, especially smaller organizations. NPSP is a free package designed to be installed over a standard Salesforce cloud (usually Sales). It's easy to implement and helps smaller orgs hit the ground running faster.
Salesforce introduced Nonprofit Cloud in 2023 as a standalone cloud rather than an installed package. It’s part of their Industry clouds that offer more advanced, robust features.
NPC’s goal was to better align with other specialized industry solutions that Salesforce offers and leverage the features in those solutions specifically for the nonprofit sector. Instead of just focusing on fundraising, NPC measures a nonprofit’s impact in activities and outcomes.
Differences Between NPSP and NPC
Cost
With the Power of Us program, nonprofits can receive 10 free licenses and discounted additional licenses. NPSP is a relatively low-cost option, outside of ongoing maintenance and development.
The licensing cost for NPC is higher than it is for Sales Cloud + NPSP, but certain editions of Nonprofit Cloud also qualify for the Power of Us program.
Operational Areas and Functionality
NPSP is centered around fundraising. Nonprofits can use other free and paid packages on an a-la-carte basis to extend Salesforce’s functionality to match their mission.
These include Volunteers for Salesforce (V4S) for volunteer management, Outbound Funds Module for award and grant disbursing, and Program Management Module for program delivery.
These will continue to be supported, but most likely will not receive any new features or development. Like NPSP, some of these are open source and may receive future community backing.
Nonprofit Cloud bundles fund, program, case, and grant management into one cloud. While this supports an integrated system, it may be too many features and thus result in unneeded technical debt for some orgs.
As of March 2025, Nonprofit Cloud doesn’t include volunteer management out of the box and may not fully support the V4S package. Core functionality should arrive later this year, but even then may not be a fully fleshed-out solution.
Future Development
Salesforce will focus all new development and features for nonprofits on NPC.
NPSP will continue to function, but it won’t receive any new features outside of features for the cloud it’s built on (usually Sales Cloud). However, NPSP is an open-source solution and might get sponsorship in the future.
Data Model
NPSP is very flexible and has a simple data model. Once installed, it needs relatively little configuration. Since it’s a package, most objects NPSP uses are custom objects.
NPC uses a more sophisticated and complex data model to serve larger nonprofits. It’s a more scalable solution for organizations looking to expand.
Since NPC is a dedicated cloud, all objects are standard. Because it’s a more all-encompassing solution, NPC also includes many objects that aren’t in Sales Cloud or NPSP, such as Care Plans for individuals and Benefits associated with programming.
Inherent in complexity differences are differences in the user experience. Key areas include modeling gifts/fundraising and how NPC models people, households, and groups. At a minimum, you should test NPC compared to NPSP and see how the data model works for real-life scenarios.
Permissions
NPSP includes profiles as part of its package. These profiles were designed as the only configuration users needed to access NPSP objects and features.
NPC favors the permission set-forward model and uses only permission sets and permission set licenses to grant access.
While baseline configurations still require profiles, a Salesforce best practice is to use permission sets to manage user access to apps and objects. Permission sets support a more modular, flexible approach to user permissions to grant users only their needed permissions.
Managing access via profiles within a packaged solution alongside a permission-set based model introduces complexity in org administration, eventually costing time and money.
Automation
NPSP uses apex classes/triggers and workflow rules to automate field syncing, rollups, record creation, and other critical processes. Even with deprecating workflow rules, the automations in NPSP will continue to be supported and work.
NPC relies on flows and other features in the other Industry clouds for automation. The features include Business Rules Engine, Data Processing Engine, and Omnistudio.
These are very helpful for automating complex workflows, especially across multiple departments, and can reduce the need for extensive custom code.
Reports
NPSP includes many common-scenario reports and dashboards that are a helpful starting point for reporting.
Some reports and dashboards that come as part of NPSP include:
- Organizations and households that donated last year but not this year
- Opportunities by type, accounting allocation, and fiscal year
- Contacts with giving total summaries
- Four dashboards that cover giving trends, campaign ROI, and forecasting based on open opportunities
NPC doesn’t include any report types out of the box, and creating custom report types can be difficult due to the complexity of the data model.
Some objects can’t be included in custom report types yet, although may be in future releases. NPC also uses many polymorphic fields across the case and program management objects that can’t be included in report types.
Third-Party Apps
Many third-party integrations support the NPSP data model, as it’s been in the ecosystem the longest compared to NPC.
NPC may not yet support the integrations you need. The number of supported apps is consistently growing, but developing and releasing a package takes a long time.
If specific integrations are critical to your organization, ensure the cloud you plan to use supports them.
Making the Choice Between NPSP and NPC
Ultimately, choosing between NPSP and NPC depends on your organization’s size, budget, and operational complexity.
NPSP remains a cost-effective, flexible solution that supports fundraising and integrates well with existing third-party apps, making it an excellent choice for smaller nonprofits.
On the other hand, NPC offers a more comprehensive, scalable system designed to measure impact beyond fundraising, though it comes with higher costs and a steeper learning curve.
As Salesforce continues to develop NPC while maintaining NPSP with limited updates, nonprofits should carefully evaluate their current and future needs before transitioning.