The Foundation Directory Online (FDO) is an online database of donations, donors, and grantmakers, from Candid.org
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Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Salesforce for Nonprofits, the Salesforce.org Nonprofit Cloud, is a nonprofit constituent relationship management platform from Salesforce, which supports constituent engagement, fundraising, and grants. Nonprofit editions contain Salesforce Lightning Edition along with the former Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) combined.
Foundation Directory Online is the best foundation research software I have used. As a grant writing professional, it has come in very handy when I'm trying to get more information or context about a foundation and they do not have a website that I can research. The additional feature of suggesting similar foundations is very nice and can save lots of time when looking for new funding opportunities
If you only want to track donations, I'd go with something simpler. If you want to track donations and programs and connections between them, there may be nothing better. If you have no technical abilities and no budget, restricted yourself solely to what it does as described exactly in the manual. If you can't devote about 0.25FTE to the constant maintenance and upgrades, don't go with it.
Lots of connection points. I can associate a contact with an organization, an event and a donation, easily bouncing between them and pulling reports accordingly. Love this!
This system has many more features than we will ever actually use but I love that because when we have a new idea or want to try something out we don't have to switch systems, we just have to dig a little deeper into salesforce and they probably have a solution waiting for us already.
Salesforce is great at training! I love their trailhead and have used it a lot, especially when I was just getting to know the system. It is easy, fun, informative, and always there to teach me something new. I can also go at my own pace instead of many people's models of training through webinars that are almost always at inconvenient times.
While FDO has an advanced search feature, I've found that sometimes it tries to be too smart for its own good. For example, if I'm looking for the Virginia Smith Foundation it will pull all foundations located in the state of Virginia with some sort of affiliated Smith and not the Virginia Smith Foundation that I'm actually looking for.
I'm uncertain as to how often the information is updated on FDO.
I think Salesforce has so much functionality that it makes it difficult in terms of overall usability. Once you can figure it out, it's a 10/10, it's just getting there. If you're willing to do the work to figure it out then you're golden. For what it's worth, I don't know if you're going to find something with this level of functionality that's easier to figure out
Any question is answered within 24-48 hours, professionally. If one person can't answer right away, they will seek answers within their support group and find the answer for you.
I would say the support for Salesforce for Nonprofits is overall pretty great, as they offer many avenues to find the information you need and offer nonprofits the ability to work with Salesforce-trained volunteers or professional for free, which is useful especially during the customization process. I will say that I have often encountered situations where I needed to figure out certain information that I could not find even amongst the vast network of knowledge they provide.
CyberGrants is more of a grant request software so that's pretty different. Grantseeker by Fluxx is a good tracking software for keeping track of your institutional fundraising progress, but ultimately FDO's database of information dwarfs any other.
As a cloud native organization with no previous Microsoft infrastructure, Salesforce was a more logical and effective option for us. The suite of products was also far more comprehensive and required less customization. We were able to adopt a "configure not code" approach to our development of systems to support our mission that lowered the cost of upgrades.
We don't apply for many grants, however; we use look for resources to direct nonprofit when looking for additional funding outside of our funding process.
Salesforce for nonprofits is our source of truth for donor and member data.
It's made a world of difference to know we only have to look in one place for an address or donation history.
We have yet to connect Salesforce with our financial software (QBO) given the cost of the third-party connectors though I am investing a fewer lower cost options I have just found.
