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Quarterly Update: Drupal-Salesforce Platform

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

The Drupal-Salesforce Project is closing the year strong with much to look forward to in 2017. For the third straight year, we’re proud to say our annual project fees will hold steady for our partners. We’re also happy to announce three national philanthropy-serving organization pilots joining the platform next year:

  • Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR)
  • Neighborhood Funders Group
  • Mission Investors Exchange

San Diego Grantmakers (SDG) and Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia (PNGP) also joined the platform this year. SDG will launch their site by the end of the year, with PNGP planning a launch in Q1 of 2017.

Participation in the platform grows with each success. If your regional association would like to join the Drupal-Salesforce Project, please contact Val Rozansky.

All regional association sites are now running the latest version of the Drupal Platform (2.8.1.2) which includes the most recent improvements to our MailChimp listserves, updates to Drupal Core, and security updates.

The most exciting new functionality developed across this year is our MailChimp Lists. This service uses MailChimp, the leading email marketing tool, integrated with the Drupal-Salesforce Platform, allowing regional association staff to manage mailing lists/listserves directly from their website and membership database. MailChimp lists even include the ability to “like” or up-vote the most helpful responses. Four regional associations have launched their MailChimp lists with two more launches imminent. We are currently discussing how we can make this functionality more accessible to interested RAs and national PSOs and then expanding it to collaborative online workspaces.

The Knowledgebase, our shared archive of hundreds of resources for grantmakers available on all partner websites, has seen robust growth. Regional associations contributed nearly 400 resources in 2016 creating a diverse and well-curated stream of content for our network. The Forum created an online Knowledgebase submission form that will be launched shortly to Regional Associations that aren’t participating in the collective technology project and National PSOs. It is our hope that contributions from all Forum members to the Knowledgebase will increase in 2017 so we can effectively leverage our collective resources.

Meanwhile on the Salesforce side, regional associations are currently upgrading to the latest version of the Salesforce Non-profit Starter Pack (NPSP3), the backbone of our own customized Salesforce package. The Salesforce Working Group has also worked with NorthPeak, our Salesforce vendor, to develop two new features: one that will enhance the process for creating new contacts and accounts so as to avoid possible duplicates and another to identify common engagement tracking workflows.

Bill Corkill and Denise Temple of the Council of Michigan Foundations and Luciano Patiño of Minnesota Council on Foundations completed their Salesforce certification this year. A few other regional association staff members are in the process of getting certified now, including the Forum’s Courtney Moore.

What’s coming in 2017? In addition to onboarding national pilot PSOs, the major improvement we’ve got our eyes on is the planned upgrade to the new Salesforce Integration module which allows much more granular configuration of how our Drupal and Salesforce systems exchange information, including real-time syncing from Salesforce to Drupal.

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