A brief history of Salesforce and the nonprofit sector
2016: Launch of Nonprofit Success Pack.
The Nonprofit Starter Pack, which lived on the Salesforce AppExchange as five separate apps, is rebranded as the Nonprofit Success Pack, now an integrated product suite. With the ability to get started with Salesforce using NPSP, nonprofits can now use a flexible, configurable, and powerful Fortune 500-level CRM system as the foundation of a robust technology ecosystem.
2023: Launch of the new Nonprofit Cloud.
Salesforce announces the release of the new Nonprofit Cloud. While nonprofits can still get NPSP and other managed packages, the new Nonprofit Cloud is built on the core Salesforce platform, giving nonprofits more customizability and access to features that organizations using other Industry Clouds on Salesforce have been able to use for years.
NPSP itself was always and still is free. Underlying Salesforce licenses (Sales/Service Cloud Enterprise Edition) are paid. Some of the other managed packages are free and some of the other managed packages are paid.
2008: Start of Nonprofit Starter Pack and Salesforce.org.
The Salesforce nonprofit community starts working on the first version of the Nonprofit Starter Pack (NPSP), a nonprofit data model built on the Salesforce platform and preconfigured for common fundraising needs of nonprofits. Salesforce.org, an independent division of Salesforce, is founded as a nonprofit reseller of Salesforce, delivering the technology to nonprofits and educational institutions. Salesforce.org donates the first 10 Salesforce subscriptions to nonprofits and educational institutions and sells added subscriptions at a discount.
2019: Salesforce and Salesforce.org combine.
Salesforce.org is integrated into Salesforce as a new industry vertical focused on nonprofits and education institutions with the intent to scale Salesforce’s philanthropic efforts and creating efficiencies. Nonprofits are now an industry market within Salesforce – just like other industries served by the company.