NationBuilder vs. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

If you are managing a nonprofit agency, advocacy group, or political campaign, NationBuilder is likely the best tool available for the job. It has everything you need in one package, excellent support from NationBuilder reps, and plenty of reputable case studies that show its effectiveness. There is also a robust network of capable partners that build custom solutions and provide consulting.

Incentivized

I’d say it’s very well suited for organizations looking to move toward AI integrations and make more data-driven decisions. As I mentioned, I’ve also used the competing product from Blackbaud, which is a very closed system — you can’t really pull out the data. Salesforce, on the other hand, has a big advantage with its APIs, allowing you to extract data, store it in Data Cloud, and do much more with it.
However, if your requirements aren’t clearly defined or if there’s heavy customization involved, the implementation can get messy. So I wouldn’t recommend using Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud in cases where the requirements and structure aren’t clearly laid out.

Incentivized

• Great platform for managing website, social media, and donations in a single dashboard.
• Some particularly helpful features includes turf maps for walking door to door.
• I really appreciate the included voter files.

• NPSP is designed to help with donor management.
• There are free add-ons for volunteer management.
• There is a new Program Management Module to better manage program participation and attendance.
• Campaigns help organize and report on marketing efforts though we use a third-party solution to send out marketing materials.

Incentivized

• NationBuilder lacks the ability to create a message board.
• NationBuilder needs to add threaded comments so you can respond to people who comment on your page.
• NationBuilder needs to make it easier to offer tiered memberships.

Incentivized

• Not an easy lift right out of the box unless you completely rule out customization
• Not "free to own" even if the grant is free because you'll need about 0.25 FTE to maintain it
• Constantly being updated which is cool but many items are "forced" and you must respond
• Lots and lots of customization are required to equal many canned solutions available for any one particular feature set (but none of them can cover the breadth and flexibility of SF)

Incentivized

There is really no other tool to compare and especially since Salesforce for Nonprofits is free!!

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

I have never had bad conversations with any support people with Salesforce but we also have not used them very much. I put it a little less because we are struggling to switch to lightning (some of our custom features do not migrate well) and it feels like the help and support for a little organization is not incredibly helpful unless we want to spend a lot of money.

Incentivized

I'm not sure. I was not involved at this stage of the decision-making process

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• The NationBuilder ecosystem is a well-connected, supportive bunch and it has been great to be a part of that
• Most inquiring clients are already aware of NationBuilder's benefits and know what they want to accomplish. This saves time during the on-boarding process
• NationBuilder's sales team is undereducated about the platform and I have received feedback from clients that they are sharks/difficult to work with. This is a big problem and I have lost business from it

Incentivized

• New email platform (integrated with Salesforce and based on Salesforce segmentation) increased open rate by 7%
• Using Salesforce Flows to design a custom batch process for approving small grants reduced days of work to one or two clicks.
• We replaced a paper system (walking around with a clipboard) to a virtual system (you can do it from anywhere!) for approving payments.

Incentivized