Building Stronger Connections: Using Relationships, Events, and Timelines in Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

For nonprofits, building meaningful connections with donors and stakeholders can be the difference between growing and shrinking. Equally important is having the tools to support every facet of your nonprofit’s mission, including program delivery and constituent engagement. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud provides features like Relationships, Events, and Timelines to give nonprofits a clear  view of their stakeholders. These tools help fundraising teams personalize outreach, strengthen donor connections, and improve campaign results while supporting broader efforts like program delivery and volunteer management.

This blog post will explore how these tools can support your nonprofit’s work – helping your organization improve donor stewardship, strengthen programs, and create a more connected organization.

The Actionable Relationship Center (ARC) in Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud provides a straightforward way to manage the complex web of relationships between donors, volunteers, partners, and beneficiaries. The ARC Relationship Graph offers a visual display of these connections between standard and custom objects, providing fundraising teams with a clear and actionable view of key relationships.

The power of ARC lies in its ability to streamline engagement:

• Visualize Donor Connections: See connections between donors, family members, corporate sponsors, and other stakeholders at a glance.
• Manage Relationships Directly: Create or update records right within the ARC, saving time on data management.
• Customize and Act: Use filters like giving history or engagement level to focus on high-priority connections.

For example, linking a donor’s profile to their company’s corporate giving program helps align your efforts to maximize giving potential.

Knowing key moments in a donor’s life can make your outreach more meaningful. . Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud’s Life Events and Milestones features allow nonprofits to track significant moments, such as career achievements, marriages, retirements, or anniversaries.

By integrating these life moments into your donor profiles, your team can tailor outreach to resonate with donors’ personal and professional lives. For example:

• Sending a congratulatory note or acknowledgment tied to a donor’s retirement or job promotion can strengthen relationships.
• Aligning major campaign asks with significant anniversaries or other milestones can increase donor receptivity.
• Automating follow-up tasks, like sending invitations to donor appreciation events or scheduling a check-in call, ensures consistent engagement.

These tools are equally valuable for program delivery, helping your nonprofit understand and respond to important life changes in their constituents’ lives. 

The Timeline feature in Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud shows a chronological view of a constituent’s key interactions, such as donations, event attendance, or service engagements. This is especially beneficial for fundraisers, caseworkers, or anyone working with long-term relationships that require careful tracking over time.

Nonprofits can use timelines to:

• Track interactions: See every touchpoint with a donor or constituent.
• Make informed decisions: Use the history of engagements to plan effective follow-ups. 
• Collaborate across teams: Share a clear record of interactions for consistent outreach. 

Timelines ensure no important detail is missed, whether you’re managing donor relationships or providing ongoing support to program participants.

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud’s features for Relationships, Life Events, and Timelines are designed to help nonprofits better understand and engage their stakeholders. These tools allow fundraising teams to run more focused campaigns, while service teams gain the insights needed to coordinate efforts effectively.

For example, tracking donor milestones opens up new opportunities for timely outreach, and using ARC to prioritize major gift prospects ensures your team focuses its efforts on high-impact connections. By bringing together data on relationships, events, and timelines, your organization can build stronger relationships that drive both fundraising success and mission impact.