Are You Ready for Expedition Impact? Here’s What You Need to Know

With ever-increasing demands from constituents and funders to demonstrate program success with hard data, there is a lot weighing on nonprofits these days. Your constituents expect results and transparency. There is growing demand from your institutional and individual donors to illustrate the impact created when resources are given to your organization. That’s why at Dreamforce 2017, Salesforce.org announced Expedition Impact during our Nonprofit Kickoff — an initiative that is equal parts technology, community, and collaboration to help you with your mission. In case you missed it, or you just need a refresher, we’re breaking down what is Expedition Impact and how you — yes you! — can get involved.

What is Expedition Impact?

Expedition Impact is an initiative made up of three components: coalitions, education and solutions. At Salesforce.org we are working with a broad set of stakeholders and thought leaders who want to come together on best practices and solutions for this complex set of challenges in our sector. We are also working to develop training programs, workshops and content around mission management and measurement. Finally, we have heard from so many of you that you want Salesforce.org to take a leadership position to deliver more technology solutions that will help you with your mission.

Thousands of nonprofits are using Salesforce products to manage, measure and communicate impact. We are committed to bringing more of these standard building blocks of program management to market to help you.

A Cutting-Edge Solution for the Age-Old Problem

Historically, fundraising, engagement and program data has been all over the place. The combination of all this data in one accessible place enables better decision making and complete transparency with all of your supporters. Some organizations have taken the time to figure this out but it’s costly and each one has to start from the ground up. We want to make all of this easier for all of you. Impact and results shouldn’t be seen as peripheral activity – they are key to delivering your mission.

Our first mission technology initiative for Expedition Impact is to build a cutting-edge solution, “Einstein Analytics for Impact.” Building off of the existing Salesforce product Einstein Analytics, you will have the capability to measure your impact and cross it with your income results. No longer will your impact be measured by your overhead which is commonly the first metric that nonprofits report. But is that information really reflecting the change that you’re making in the communities you work so hard for? It is time to share more meaningful metrics and the first step in this is to create data standards in the industry, so that the numbers we share are meaningful across organizations for donors to make important decisions. And we’re here to make that easier — for everyone.

Nonprofits don’t create change alone and we at Salesforce.org can’t build this solution without you.

How do I get involved?

Each of you are an integral part of this process and we want to hear from you. There are a couple different ways you can get involved with Expedition Impact:

1. Join us in 2018 for our Expedition Impact events and workshops. Keep an eye out for smaller events in cities across the US; we’ll be announcing these dates on our Twitter and Facebook pages.
2. We want to talk with you about what you need to measure your mission’s impact. How are you doing it now, what are you planning? What obstacles are you up against? What successes have you seen? We want to hear from you! Get in touch.
3. Want to simply learn more about Einstein Analytics? Check out the Trailmixes — they’re like your favorite Spotify playlist…for learning!