Throughout my career in the Salesforce ecosystem, there are moments where the same feature request will bubble up for 4 or 5 different customers, and its solution lies just beyond the core capability of Salesforce. In the past, it’s been everything from Salesforce to Quickbooks integration, mapping capabilities, or advanced quoting. Over the last few months, I’ve noticed a new trend surfacing: integrating FormAssembly and Salesforce.
FormAssembly is a powerful, web-based form builder for data collection. Its tiered pricing model allows our clients to scale as they grow, and the company’s nonprofit discount helps even the most budget-conscious organizations acquire this tool.
As a Salesforce consultant, the ability to connect with the platform is the feature I’m most drawn to. Think of FormAssemby and Salesforce together as supercharged Web-to-Lead, without the limitation of the lead object, which isn’t always useful in nonprofit workflows. FormAssembly’s documentation is clear and concise for Salesforce Admins of all levels, but enough of pumping the platform up, here are some recent use-cases I found most relevant to our nonprofit clients:
FormAssembly and Salesforce for Program Registration
Judging by the frequency of this request, the days of sending a free-form email to a ‘contact@’ address for course registration are limited. Over the past few months, requests to have an individual initiate a registration have been frequent. This request has come in the form of new and repeat Students registering for learning-based programs.
For new participants, FormAssembly has the ability to create a new Account (or Household for our NPSP clients) along with a new Contact. Depending on your FormAssembly tier, returning students may also have the option to see pre-populated values with Salesforce Prefill. This will go a long way to reduce clicks for existing contacts and at the same time, drive a better customer experience!
FormAssembly and Salesforce for Volunteer Inquiries
A cornerstone for many of our nonprofit clients is the commitment and dedication of their volunteer pool, so why not give those eager, soon-to-be volunteers a simple way to express their interest? Providing individuals with a digital form to complete prior to volunteering helps to vet new contacts, categorize skills by collecting data, and present different fields dynamically based on previous responses.
FormAssembly and Salesforce for Applying for Grants
Many nonprofits look to offer support financially, but collecting and sorting email applications can quickly turn into a nightmare. In one of my favorite implementations, using a variety of forms, our client is now able to create new households and contacts within Salesforce, while simultaneously creating an application record. Need to collect documentation as part of the application process? Documents uploaded to the FormAssembly form, map directly to the related Files object to cleanly hold attachments. FormAssembly’s Prefill function will even allow for customized forms to be sent in the event of reapplication or expense collection.
FormAssembly and Salesforce for Event/Retreat Registration
Charity and fundraising events will almost certainly be unrecognizable in the near future thanks to COVID-19. A number of platforms such as Classy, Give Lively and OneCause offer event registration and management, but under the right use case, contacts can express interest in events by filling out an intake form, or by filling out a waiver after they have registered. We have recently built out a household waiver for contacts attending an event to sign and attach to the household record within Salesforce
Combining Use Cases
FormAssembly’s scalability offers our clients the opportunity to leverage FormAssembly in a non-traditional manner, after meeting a previously mentioned use case. For example, Web-to-Lead is a great tool if your organization is leveraging Leads. If individuals are simply entered in as Contacts, and you don’t want to go through the conversion process, a FormAssembly ‘contact us’ form would be a great tool. But what if your organization is leveraging external research analysts, who need to submit new contacts to be targeted? Leveraging a form, where a new contact is created, may just be the solution as opposed to creating an external Salesforce license, layered with permission sets.
The ability to be creative with FormAssembly forms certainly makes the tool very attractive, especially for our non-profit clients who may be able to take advantage of non-profit discounting. As mentioned, some of these use cases would allow for non-profits to avoid a community portal or additional licenses, while leveraging the ecosystem; something Plative knows a thing or two about. If this sparks your creative juices, let’s talk about how we can put FormAssembly and Salesforce to work for your organization!
