Are you struggling to collect information from your constituents? Do you collect form information and manually load/data load it into Salesforce? Many non-profits organizations today are struggling to get their data in Salesforce in a consistent and easy manner. This is where FormAssembly can help. FormAssembly is a powerful form-building tool that connects with Salesforce to provide data for various applications. We’ve implemented FormAssembly for dozens of organizations and seen great success.
Data collection for your programs is one key area that FormAssembly excels in. Alongside the Program Management Module (PMM) in Salesforce, FormAssembly can help you scale your programs through data driven decisions. Below are some specific data collection forms that FormAssembly can support.
Potential Use Cases:
- Applications
- These are your application forms for your programs, scholarships and grants. Information captured can include full contact information, payment information, supplementary attachments and referrals. These forms can also include repeatable sections to accommodate multiple contacts or organizations. An example of this would be capturing the details of a resume as data points into Salesforce.
- Surveys
- These are forms sent to your program participants. These forms can be sent automatically using Salesforce automation linking the recipients to your form. The forms can be pre-filled for the surveys that aren’t anonymous.
- Referrals/Nominations
- Collecting information from references is an essential part of many application processes. FormAssembly allows you to create Contacts for each of your referrals and collect reference letters and send these directly to Salesforce.
- Tuition Collection
- Payment collection for your applications can be handled seamlessly through FormAssembly as part of your forms. FormAssembly can connect with a great number of payment processors including iATS, Chargent, and Stripe and even be configured to calculate amounts based on selections made by the form recipient.
Here are 5 FormAssembly features that can help your organization better collect form data:
- Pre-Fill Information
FormAssembly allows you to pre-fill information from Salesforce onto your form. This is a great feature that helps your authenticated constituents save time when inputting information onto a form and reduce costly data entry errors.
- Salesforce Connector
FormAssembly connects directly with Salesforce, this allows you to create/update multiple records from a single form and include the logic for doing so.
- Save and Resume Responses
Forms can be saved and resumed at a later time to help constituents complete longer forms. This feature works best in conjunction with Salesforce Experience sites where users can login and resume a form.
- Save as PDF
Submitted forms can be saved as a PDF and saved onto a record in Salesforce. This is a powerful feature that allows you to save records of a response that can be emailed and shared with the greater team. FormAssembly also has this information saved in its response log.
- Payment Connectors
Payment platforms can be added to your forms to collect payment and send payment data to Salesforce. There are a number of payment options available such as Stripe, Authorize.net, and iATS and more.
Once you’re ready to implement FormAssembly, there are a few NPSP specific tips and tricks for setting up your forms:
- Households
NPSP by default will automatically creates a household for all newly created contacts, the issue, however, is that household contacts collected on a form will then be separated into individual households. The solution is to bypass the automatic household creation by creating/updating a household record for the first contact and linking all subsequent household contacts to that single household record.
- Relationships
Relationships created in a form cannot update existing records without triggering the NPSP validation rule to prevent existing relationship contacts from being updated. The workaround to keeping the validation rule is to create new relationships every time in your form. As an alternative, the validation rule can be deactivated and matching rules based off a matching key of contact identifiers and relationship type can be set up to determine whether a record should be updated or created. This solution requires a matching key field in Salesforce and flow automation to update the field.
- Affiliations
Similar to relationships, affiliations record creation requires a matching key of a contact identifier, account identifier, and affiliation type to to determine whether a record should be updated or created. This solution requires a matching key field in Salesforce and flow automation to update the field.
- Repeatable Sections
Leverage repeatable sections when creating multiple records of the same object. An example would be creating multiple contacts for your children. This allows the form user to decide how many records they’d like to create.
- Object Dependencies
Format the object dependencies in your Salesforce connector such that child objects are dependent on parent objects. A good example are your relationships, these child objects should be dependent on the contact records and should be skipped if the parent contact is skipped.
If you found form assembly for non-profits interesting or want to learn more, reach out a Plative consultant!
