A Walk Down Memory Lane
Back in 2011, DaizyLogik co-founder, Nineta Martinov was hired to work as a Salesforce consultant with NPower Seattle where she became familiar with the NPower Template for Salesforce. The origins of the NPower Template can be traced back to 2006 and to countless collaborations with nonprofits and talented, passionate individuals who contributed ideas and code to build a common template that nonprofits can leverage to make the most of their Salesforce CRM. Around the same time, emerged [what was then called] the Nonprofit Starter Pack brought to life by the Salesforce Foundation, now known as the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP).
Fast forward to 2020, DaizyLogik had the opportunity to transition probably one of the last remaining NPower Template Salesforce instances to the latest version of Nonprofit Success Pack. “This project has been somewhat emotional to me,” said Nineta Martinov. “As I got to unravel and unplug the pieces of the NPower Template and move data into the NPSP, it’s been an illuminating experience as to how much things have changed in these nine years, yet how much they stayed the same.”
In Keeping with The Times
DaizyLogik frequently helps their clients adopt the latest advancements in the Salesforce nonprofit technology, as it did with School’s Out Washington (SOWA), a nonprofit organization that provides services and guidance for organizations to ensure all young people have safe places to learn and grow when not in school. The organization has been successfully using Salesforce with the NPower Template since around 2011. As part of the organization’s initiative to revamp its digital assets, SOWA decided to modernize its CRM by moving to Salesforce’s Nonprofit Success Pack and switching to the Lightning experience. In this post we illustrate the first part of this effort, namely the journey to NPSP.
Smooth Transitions
At DaizyLogik we always approach transition projects with deliberate care and diligent planning. Using a full sandbox we tested the upgrade to NPSP and planned out the data conversion down to the smallest detail. School’s Out Washington had many customizations and integrations which had to be preserved or upgraded to work with the NPSP. DaizyLogik worked to surgically update code and structures so that NPower Template pieces could be safely removed from the system.
One takeaway from this project has been the striking similarities between the NPower Template and the NPSP. We found that most fields and structures transferred very easily and many of the template’s settings can now be found in the NPSP Settings. One aspect of the NPower Template that we knew SOWA wanted to preserve is the NPower Lead Converter which allows staff to mass convert leads which are coming into the system from various integrations; a function that had proven very successful for them. DaizyLogik was able to update the code of the mass lead converter to work with the account model in NPSP, therefore minimizing any disruption to the processes that staff was accustomed to.
Onwards
Now that SOWA and DaizyLogik have successfully completed the transition to NPSP, staff can look forward to leveraging the additional functionality in NPSP and benefiting from the ongoing updates and improvements that NPSP continues to make available. The organization is already excited about the opportunity to leverage the Enhanced Recurring Donations feature that will allow staff to more easily track and manage recurring gifts from donors over extended periods of time.
In Their Words
We asked School’s Out Washington to reflect on our work on this project and here is what they had to say: “What I love most about working with Nineta and DaizyLogik is their ability to explain technical aspects of Salesforce to those who are not as well versed in it. Nineta is also very transparent and upfront about costs and risk, and is committed to weighing those out with you so that your organization gets as much value from the finished product as possible. The entire process was very organized (Basecamp and Google Docs for project management) and Nineta is very flexible on response times depending on your availability. I can always trust her in our work together.” – Shirley Lu, Salesforce Administrator and Technical Project Manager
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