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.
$36
per month per user
Submittable
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Submittable offers tools to launch, measure, and grow social impact programs, locally and globally. From grants and scholarships to awards and CSR programs, Submittable partners with users to make a difference. The vendor states Submittable has supported over 95,000 social impact programs, receiving nearly 20 million applications, and that teams save an average of 12 hours per week and launch in an average of 14 days.
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.
Submittable is great for grant management, grantmaking, and scholarship awards. It's a very useful tool also when there are multiple reviewers and committees involved in the assessment of the application. The table feature is helpful, but to download the information in a usable report is a pain. Overall a very useful tool for funding.
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.
It used to be easier to download submission files from the submissions screen; now, you have to run a report and request a download.
Giving access to reviewers could be easier. It would be nice if we could create the email account and password and then give that to the reviewer. Right now, the invites are often junk, spam, or quarantine.
Submittable is easy to use for our applicants, streamlines the grantmaking process and provides structures for a range of reviewers on our panels. i like that you continue to come up with new tools, although I wish many didn't come with additional costs.
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
Submittable is very user-friendly. As both a application builder and an applicant myself I find the system intuitive and easy. Many pre-populated questions allow a grant administrator to build an application quickly. The start-up time we first joined as a Submittable client was fast, too. Submittable does not take much time for a first-time user to understand.
We have thankfully never experienced an outage nor been affected by a technology issue on Submittable's side that has delayed our grant process. We have instead been able to distribute over $6M in donated dollars to AAPI small business owners because Submittable is trustworthy and available
We've had a quick and efficient submittable experience that has always been easy to use. When we need a report it downloads within seconds, even the larger reports are 30 seconds or less to download. Pages are quick to load and reports complete in a more than reasonable time frame
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.
I think that they are good at answering our questions and solving our problems. We occasionally get reports from applicants about problems the Submittable team has not solved, but I do not know what the applicant has done to get the problem solved.
We have been using this for many years but my memory is that we had a human walk us through how to use basic features. We also used the resource library to learn about specific topics or issues as they came up.
10/10 because we were able to meet virtually and still get all of our questions answered! Online was effective too because we could easily record the sessions and review them later. Since we had to onboard our reviewers virtually, it was actually convenient that this was the same method we learned how to use the entire program virtually too.
I would say, provide Submittable as much detailed information on your planned use of the platform and your desires with the platform as possible, and the implementation will be tailored to accommodate your organization with minimal lag time and issues/problems.
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.
When we decided on Submittable: a) Most cost-effective: solution would cost under USD3,000 per year with no setup fee. b) We needed key features of this solution that were available out-of-the-box, e.g., Online Application Form -- including answers to approximately 20-30 questions, completing a financial income/expense summary spreadsheet, and submitting supporting docs in Word, PDF, or other common file formats. Also, applicants would get instant feedback if they do not qualify, so they won't even bother completing their submission. Backend workflow allows up to 8+ committee members/reviewers to review application submissions, submit and share comments/questions, approve/reject, grant amount recommendations, etc. Basic reporting will include lists of applicants and key data by submission year (e.g., contact details, funding requested, key metrics, etc.). Email alerts to reviewers as applications are submitted. Summary of completed application emailed to applicant upon submission so they have a copy for their records—the ability to centrally track any email exchanges with applicants.
We have been easily able to grow. Not only are we able to process different applications, but Submittable makes it easy to add applications onto our plan. Additionally, their eligibility form before the application does a good job of screening applicants so we do not pay for extra applications.
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.
We were able to launch our first-ever community grants program on time, and received over 300 applications (we were anticipating ~50 in our first year out.)
This has substantially improved our application and tracking capabilities for our employee relief fund grants, and ensured we are following IRS guidelines.
