Salesforce for Nonprofits
Salesforce for Nonprofits is the umbrella name for Salesforce products built specifically for nonprofit organizations to manage fundraising, donor relationships, program delivery, grantmaking, and volunteer work.
Definition
Salesforce for Nonprofits is the umbrella name for Salesforce products built specifically for nonprofit organizations to manage fundraising, donor relationships, program delivery, grantmaking, and volunteer work. It is not a single feature. The name covers two distinct product lines: the older Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), a managed package layered on standard CRM objects, and Nonprofit Cloud, a newer suite of industry data objects that Salesforce now markets alongside Agentforce.
The point of both products is the same. A nonprofit needs a system that tracks people, gifts, programs, and outcomes in one place, priced for a tight budget. Eligible organizations get heavily discounted or donated licenses through the Power of Us program, which is why so many charities run on Salesforce.
NPSP, Nonprofit Cloud, and which one you actually have
The name has changed several times
The branding here is genuinely confusing, and the confusion matters because it changes what you build. The product started as the Nonprofit Success Pack, an open managed package the nonprofit community could install for free. Salesforce.org later folded into the main company, and the marketing name shifted to Salesforce for Nonprofits as the catch-all. The current flagship is Nonprofit Cloud, and Salesforce now presents it under the Agentforce Nonprofit banner to highlight the built-in AI agents. None of these renames retired anything on their own. An org running NPSP today still runs NPSP. The label on the website does not rewrite your schema. When someone says they use Salesforce for Nonprofits, your first job is to find out which underlying product they actually have, because NPSP and Nonprofit Cloud store donations in completely different objects. Ask whether donations live on the Opportunity object (NPSP) or on Gift Transaction records (Nonprofit Cloud). That single question tells you more than any branding.
How NPSP models a nonprofit
NPSP is a managed package that sits on top of standard Salesforce CRM. It reuses objects you already know and reshapes them for fundraising. Its centerpiece is the Household Account model, where each Contact is grouped into a household so a family can be tracked as one giving unit. Donations are stored as Opportunity records, with Payments and Recurring Donations handling pledges and scheduled gifts. NPSP adds the nonprofit-specific pieces on top: Affiliations link a person to the organizations they work for, Relationships connect contacts to each other, and Soft Credits attribute a gift to someone who influenced it without writing a second donation. Matching Gifts, In-Kind Gifts, Tribute Gifts, and Allocations round out the fundraising model. Because it is a package, NPSP installs into an existing org and brings custom fields, rollup automation, and page layouts with it. The trade-off is that you inherit its design decisions. The Opportunity-as-donation pattern is powerful but it bends a sales object into a fundraising one, which sometimes shows in reporting.
How Nonprofit Cloud is different
Nonprofit Cloud is not a package bolted onto CRM. It is a set of industry data objects delivered as part of the Salesforce platform, sharing the same Industries foundation that powers Salesforce products for other regulated sectors. Fundraising does not use the Opportunity object at all. Instead it introduces purpose-built records: Gift Transaction for an individual gift, Gift Commitment for a pledge or recurring schedule, Gift Designation for where the money is meant to go, and Gift Entry for guided single or batch processing. Outreach Source Code tracks where a donation came from, and rollup summaries aggregate giving by donor, household, campaign, and designation. Around fundraising sit the other modules: Program and Case Management for service delivery and care plans, Outcome Management for measuring impact, Grantmaking for both funders and applicants, and Volunteer Management for shifts and hours. Because the objects are native rather than packaged, they line up cleanly with platform features like Data Cloud, Flows, and the Agentforce agents Salesforce ships for fundraising and program teams.
NPSP is at end of innovation
This is the fact that decides most new projects. NPSP has reached what Salesforce calls End of Innovation. As of late 2025, it is no longer offered as a preconfigured package in new production orgs, and it stopped receiving new features and enhancements. It is not dead. Existing NPSP orgs keep working, Salesforce still supports them through cases, and the packages can still be installed by following the documented steps when needed. What changed is the roadmap. All new investment, every new capability, and the AI work now go into Nonprofit Cloud rather than NPSP. So an organization can stay on NPSP indefinitely with support, but it will not get anything new. For a brand new implementation, Salesforce guidance points to Nonprofit Cloud. The practical read for an architect is simple. Maintain and extend NPSP where it already runs, but plan new builds on Nonprofit Cloud so you are not building on a frozen foundation.
Migrating from NPSP to Nonprofit Cloud
Because the two products use different architectures, moving from NPSP to Nonprofit Cloud is not a click-to-upgrade. There is no in-place switch that converts an Opportunity-based donation history into Gift Transaction records automatically. Salesforce treats this as a fresh implementation. The recommended path is to set up Nonprofit Cloud in a new org and migrate data into the new object model, mapping old NPSP structures onto their Nonprofit Cloud equivalents. Donations on Opportunities map to Gift Transactions, Recurring Donations map to Gift Commitments, and household and contact data carries over into the new constituent model. Salesforce publishes migration and implementation guides to walk through the field-by-field mapping, the staging steps, and the data load. None of this is trivial, especially for an org with years of giving history, custom rollups, and integrations to payment processors. Budget real time for it. The upside is that you land on the supported, actively developed platform instead of carrying a frozen package forward forever.
The Power of Us program
The reason Salesforce is so common in the nonprofit world is price. Through the Power of Us program, eligible nonprofit organizations and educational institutions receive a grant of donated subscriptions plus deep discounts on additional licenses. That grant is what puts an enterprise CRM within reach of a small charity that could never pay commercial list price. Eligibility is verified, typically by confirming registered nonprofit status in your country, and approved organizations also get access to nonprofit-specific resources and a community of other nonprofit admins. The program applies across the Salesforce for Nonprofits lineup, so it covers both NPSP and Nonprofit Cloud. For anyone scoping a project, this changes the math early. A nonprofit is not pricing Salesforce the way a commercial company does, and the donated licenses often shape how many users and which editions are realistic. Confirm Power of Us eligibility and the exact grant before designing the user model, because the license count you can afford drives a lot of downstream decisions.
How to enable a Nonprofit Cloud feature
In a Nonprofit Cloud org, the modules are not all on by default. An admin turns on each capability in Setup, assigns the matching permission sets, and completes the feature-specific prerequisites before staff can use it. Here is the high-level shape of enabling a Nonprofit Cloud feature such as Fundraising.
- Confirm you have a Nonprofit Cloud org
This setup applies to Nonprofit Cloud, not NPSP. Verify the org was provisioned with Nonprofit Cloud and that you have System Administrator access before you start.
- Enable the feature in Setup
In Setup, open the Nonprofit Cloud settings and turn on the module you need, such as Fundraising, Program Management, or Grantmaking. Complete any listed prerequisites first.
- Assign permission sets
Grant the feature-specific permission sets and permission set licenses to the staff who will use the module. Without these, the new objects and tabs stay hidden.
- Configure objects and page layouts
Map custom fields, adjust the Lightning record pages, and wire up the Flows the feature relies on so the experience fits how your team actually works.
Gift entry, donor and household profiles, commitments, designations, and rollup summaries for giving.
Service delivery, intake assessments, and care plan guidance for the people a program serves.
Impact tracking and data collection to measure how effective a program is.
Application and award management for funders, and the applicant side for organizations seeking grants.
Opportunity posting, volunteer assignment, shift management, and hour tracking.
- Enabling a feature is not the same as configuring it. Staff still see nothing until permission sets are assigned.
- Nonprofit Cloud Fundraising does not use the Opportunity object. Reports and integrations built for NPSP donations will not map over unchanged.
- Do not assume a feature is available in every edition or region. Check the prerequisites for each module before promising it to stakeholders.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Nonprofit CloudSalesforce
- Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) Managed PackageSalesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Salesforce for Nonprofits.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Salesforce for Nonprofits.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What is Salesforce for Nonprofits?
Q2. What was it formerly called?
Q3. How do nonprofits get discounted access?
Discussion
Loading discussion…