Trailhead: Why It’s Huge for Admins, Developers and Nonprofit Organizations

By: Mary Pustejovsky, Solutions Architect, Heller Consulting

With all the excitement at Dreamforce this year, you may have missed one of the biggest announcements yet for nonprofits: a brand new Trail in Trailhead dedicated solely to nonprofit admins. This is HUGE!

I’m thrilled to see a Trail for all the small-but-mighty organizations out there. Many nonprofit organizations have a limited budget and limited staff. People who work at nonprofits are known for “wearing many hats” and one of those is often the Salesforce Administrator hat.

These “accidental admins” are often left on their own to learn how to manage and customize Salesforce for their organization’s needs. Luckily we have the Power of Us Hub, where admins can find training, resources, documentation, and connect with members of the community. The Nonprofit Trail provides another fantastic resource, bringing everything together in one coherent story.

What do I mean by “story?” Well, the Trail features a real-life nonprofit, Cradles to Crayons, and their admin, Zachery Tapp. As Trailhead walks you through the process of setting up the Nonprofit Starter Pack, it’s great to periodically hear from Zakk, someone who’s been there. These short videos serve to humanize what can sometimes be… well, boring technical documentation.

What, you do like reading technical documentation? Well, for the 99% percent of you who don’t, the Nonprofit Trail is engaging and fun! It spices up dry technical concepts with real-world scenarios. To me, this is where the Nonprofit Trail really shines. It connects us to people and situations that resonate, rather than just telling us to “click here” or “enter data there.” The Trail helps us understand the why behind the steps, rather than only focusing on the what.

My favorite example is Zakk’s explanation of the Household Account model. I love the way he takes technical concepts and makes them real for users. I see this kind of engaging, story-based, instructional content as the future of technical documentation and learning.

I think I can say with some certainty that many people involved with nonprofits are like myself — we got into this field because we care about people and we care about making a difference. Technology is just a tool to help us reach that goal, and Trailhead helps us do that in a whole new way.

Get started with the Nonprofit Trial in Trailhead.