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Salesforce Offers Your Human Services Agency Should Consider

Posted in: Blog
By: Eric Magnuson

Salesforce app makers and professional services organizations dedicated to the nonprofit sector are creating new ways to help their nonprofit clients adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Salesforce Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are offering new licensing discounts on top of existing nonprofit discounts or extended trial periods, essentially providing your nonprofit with a free use period during this initial stage of COVID-19 pandemic response. In addition to our own offerings, we’ve informally compiled options from other Salesforce app vendors that we think would benefit nonprofits and human services organizations coping with the Coronavirus outbreak.

Before diving in, it’s important to keep in mind the implications for your organization don’t begin and and end with the click of an install button. At Exponent Partners, we regularly help our customers select and implement third party apps best suited to meet their needs—it’s a process involving people as well as products. For example, if your organization may not need the product or service after the trial period, you will need to manage the cancellation terms as well as the change process with your staff who have come to expect the product or service. If we can help you navigate app selection, user adoption, and change management during COVID-19, contact us to get started.

(Note: Covid-related offers in the Salesforce marketplace are rapidly evolving at a fast pace. We will strive to keep the information current and accurate. If you have an addition or revision to this blog that you’d like to share, email me.)

1. Digital Signature

Conga Sign

Conga makes a number of different apps that our nonprofit clients benefit from, including Conga Composer and Conga Grid. Anticipating nonprofits moving to a more virtual model of program work will benefit from an electronic signature capability, they are now offering Conga Sign for free use during a very long trial period. If you decide to use it beyond the extended trial period you will also find it is typically much less expensive than the more well known electronic signature options.

Extended Free Trial of Digital Signature app for Salesforce.org Nonprofits:

  • For verified nonprofits, new to Conga Sign
  • Get a free extended trial of Conga Sign for Salesforce
  • Trial must be downloaded by 6/1/2020 and end 9/30/2020

Read the Conga Sign user documentation.to learn more about how the tool works and check out the Appexchange listing.

2. Text Messaging

When you are no longer able to meet in-person with the people you support, what are your choices for continuing to provide support? For nonprofits providing direct service to people the obvious adaptation for staying in touch is to move more interactions to text messaging. Fortunately, there are many options for adding text messaging to Salesforce.

Mogli SMS

When we decided to figure out how to get text messaging into the hands of our clients so they can continue their work we reached out to the folks at Mogli. Mogli SMS is a Salesforce-native text messaging app whose origins are in addressing the needs of nonprofits. They are now offering nonprofits heavily discounted introductory packages and extended trials. Email Mogli directly to get more information about their COVID-19 related packages.

Twilio

When you peel back the covers on most of the internet companies you will find Twilio being used somewhere. They provide backbone services for sending text messages and more to a lot of companies. They are also very committed to the nonprofit sector with some very generous allocations of free messages. In support of organizations responding to COVID-19 they are offering deeper discounds nad more product donations for eligible nonprofits. Visit the Twilio website to learn more.

3. Population Impact Assessment

Socialsuite

Socialsuite is a company that has built a Salesforce-native app for collecting and measuring impact data. In response to the global epidemic they leveraged Salesforce Communities to provide a standalone version of their app with an expert-informed survey for assessing the impact of COVID-19 on a client population over time. It is entirely free to use. Watch this video to get a sense for whether this tool would benefit your organization. Read more about Socialsuite’s COVID-19 Social Impact Assessment on their website.