Highlights from the Salesforce.org Nonprofit Summit

Salesforce.org’s second annual Nonprofit Summit, held earlier this month, attracted over 6,500 attendees from 100 countries. Those who tuned in to the virtual event were treated to conversations with some incredible headliners, and heard nonprofit customers share their technology impact stories. 

Three key themes emerged from the Summit: The power of building strong relationships to achieve your mission; the importance of flexibility, integration, and innovation to support your mission in times of change and growth; and the value of having secure data to gain deeper insights. 

The Summit welcomed some of the most impressive individuals and organizations in the nonprofit sector, including Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Mary’s Meals, World Central Kitchen, the Ford Foundation, Greenpeace, Save the Children, and more to speak at the event’s global mainstage, in breakout sessions, and on thought leadership panels. 

The event kicked off with opening remarks by Joan Garry, an industry veteran and champion for the nonprofit sector, which led directly into the first panel discussion on the topic of climate. 

That panel, titled Activism in a Digital First World, focused on creating a sustainable future and was moderated by Salesforce.org’s Chief Engagement Officer Cristina Jones. Academy Award-winning actor and political activist Jane Fonda, youth organizers and climate activists also joined the conversation and shared ways to drive meaningful climate action at scale. 

Next, the Summit featured a conversation between Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, a $16 billion international human welfare and social justice philanthropic organization, and Dr. Una Osili, Associate Dean for Research and International Programs at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The two discussed innovative solutions to the challenges facing nonprofits. Learn more about the insights they shared, including the future of funding.

Finally, acclaimed journalist and producer Soledad O’Brien interviewed José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, who spoke about the power of a good meal to reignite, maintain, and grow a community. 

Throughout the day, top customers shared their experiences using Salesforce and highlighted the digital transformations their organizations have undergone. 

First to share their story was Mary’s Meals, an international organization providing a daily meal to over two million children at their places of education in 20 countries across the world. Founder and CEO Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, and director of communications Kirsten Morrison talked about how the organization is using technology to scale their goals, their programs, and their impact. 

Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s (BGCA) chief operating officer Lorraine Orr, in a panel moderated by Salesforce.org’s Sterrin Bird, highlighted the importance of technology within their organization. When the pandemic hit, BGCA quickly realized they needed to rethink their entire service delivery model in order to continue making an impact. They started by using technology to connect data across their 4,900 Club locations so that national leaders could gain a real-time view into members’ needs and preferences. 

“With MyClubHub, our clubs will have access to real-time data at their fingertips to show how club members are participating. With a quick glance at a dashboard, they’ll know how many kids are in their club at any given time, what programs these young people are participating in, and the achievement in those programs,” Lorraine shared.

More than 35 sessions took place across the Summit’s key event tracks, which included Manage Your Nonprofit, Direct and Expand Your Programs, Grow Fundraising Impact, Drive Marketing Performance, and Govern and Protect Your Data.

For American viewers, a panel composed of nonprofit Trailblazers Evelyn Diaz, president of Heartland Alliance, Sarah Angel-Johnson, CIO of Save the Children, and Geoff DeLizzio, chief development officer of The Epilepsy Foundation, moderated by Piper Sullivan from Salesforce.org, discussed the importance of understanding digital evolution and knowing where your organization is on its digital maturity journey.

On day one, we also hosted a group of 14 nonprofit executives at the Soho House in New York City. Soledad O’Brien led a thought-provoking discussion with Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, co-authors of The Smart Nonprofit, and David Brown, senior vice president of strategy at Knotch, a content intelligence company. They shared valuable insights that addressed the many challenges nonprofits are facing around smart tech adoption, content strategy, change management, and leadership.

And our international viewers had the pleasure of learning from Trailblazers Amber Burke, CIO at Oxfam UK, and Andrew Hatton, CIO at Greenpeace UK, along with Brani Milosevic, a digital strategist and consultant for the not-for-profit sector. They shared tips and lessons for how to support your organization on its journey of change and digital maturity.

Nonprofit Trailblazers also got a peek at the latest nonnprofit innovations from Salesforce and a product roadmap overview during the event.

The innovations featured at Nonprofit Summit included Marketing Cloud Engagement for Nonprofits, which helps organizations create donor journeys to properly engage and retain supporters; Einstein for Nonprofits with RFM calculations, which provides predictive metrics to look at all fundraising data and identify which donors a development team should target for cultivation; and Experience Cloud for Nonprofits Donor Portal, which enables donors to self-service by looking up their donation history, saving staff time. Data Lake for Nonprofit Cloud, Powered by Amazon Web Services was also announced. Available later this year, this open-source solution integrates Salesforce’s data model for nonprofits, Nonprofit Success Pack, with AWS Data Lake and analytics platforms like Tableau to help nonprofit customers accelerate impact and engagement by simplifying their data operations. A huge thank you to our launch partners Cloud for Good, Coastal Cloud and Slalom who continue to play a critical role in driving our customer success with this solution. Learn more here. 

Each of these innovations was designed for and with the nonprofits represented at Nonprofit Summit, and their community partnership continues to be extremely important. 

For more information about the Product Roadmap session, please visit the Trailblazer community here

Marie Rosecrans
Senior Vice President, Go-To-Market at Salesforce.org

As Senior Vice President of Go-to-Market at Salesforce.org, Marie has responsibility for our industry solutions, product marketing, and customer marketing teams. Marie is committed to helping nonprofit and educational institutions accelerate their digital transformations with Salesforce and .org’s custom built solutions. She’s held various leadership positions in her 13.5 years at Salesforce, and her legendary commitment to both customers and colleagues lead to her nickname as the “team mom.” 

Marie is an active volunteer with the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, her daughter’s high school, and board member of SF Basque Cultural Center. Before joining Salesforce in 2008, she held positions in customer support, professional services, product marketing, and program management at Oracle, Peoplesoft, Evolve, and Primavera. Marie lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and enjoys hiking and traveling with her husband and two teenagers.