Plative recently co-hosted and sponsored the nonprofit event of the summer with BOLDforce, Salesforce’s equality group focused on amplifying and empowering voices in the Black community. We had dozens of the most impactful nonprofits from across the city attending! If you missed the event, there’s no need to worry—I’ll walk you through the electric afternoon so you can feel like you were there.
Mikayla Mitchell, BOLDforce Chicago President and Senior Solution Engineer at Salesforce, along with Kayla DeSouza, BOLDforce Chicago Vice President and Account Executive at Salesforce, graciously kicked off the afternoon with a tour of Salesforce Tower. If you’ve never been, this spot offers some of the best views of the city.
After the tour, we were fortunate to have Michael Perez, Area Vice President of Nonprofit Sales at Salesforce, as our keynote speaker. Michael explained that Salesforce is guided by five core values: Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and Environmental Sustainability. He emphasized that these values demonstrate Salesforce’s commitment to “changemakers”—tens of thousands of nonprofit customers around the world! He noted that technology is an enabler, empowering organizations to continue driving change for good and overcoming challenges they face. At Plative, we couldn’t agree more.
Following the inspiring keynote speech, I was excited to introduce Plative. In case you’re unfamiliar with who we are and what we do, Plative is a premium Salesforce implementation partner that specializes in working with nonprofits. At this point in our company’s history, Plative has completed over 2,200 projects, more than half of which have been with nonprofits! In addition to that level of industry knowledge and expertise, Plative boasts impressive technical skills. With over 300 Salesforce certifications among about 160 staff members, Plative knows Salesforce exceptionally well.
Leveraging Salesforce’s Program Management Solutions
Next, we brought in some of Plative’s top-notch talent to lead the two technical sessions planned for the afternoon. Miata King, Principal Consultant at Plative, demonstrated how to maximize program impact with Salesforce’s Program Management solutions for nonprofits. The Program Management Module in Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud helps organizations manage their programs, track activities, and measure impact. It allows nonprofits to define and manage programs, set goals, and monitor progress. Outcome Management complements this by enabling organizations to define desired outcomes, collect data, and analyze results. Together, they provide a comprehensive framework for nonprofits to align their activities with strategic goals, ensuring that programs are effective and outcomes are achieved. Miata illustrated how a fictional nonprofit might use PMM and Outcome Management to tackle the classic problem many nonprofits face: defining programs and establishing clear, measurable outcomes to quantify success, as well as efficiently reporting on program performance.
Maximizing Nonprofit Engagement with Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
Plative’s very own Aaron Pratt, Associate Director of Plative’s Marketing practice, demonstrated how nonprofits can connect with constituents and maximize their engagement with Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly known as Pardot). Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is Salesforce’s native marketing solution within Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, helping organizations engage lifelong supporters. It’s an end-to-end automation tool that manages the full lifecycle and personalizes engagement. It allows nonprofits to know their constituents by providing a single source of truth that unlocks rich data to understand interests and create relevant outreach. Account Engagement humanizes moments that matter by orchestrating personalized journeys and drip campaigns, helping build deeper relationships while reducing manual efforts for your team. Within Account Engagement, you can view reports and dashboards in real time, assess campaign performance, and make strategic decisions. Having all this information in one place—Nonprofit Cloud—allows organizations to do more with less. Aaron showcased how the same fictional nonprofit could use Account Engagement to communicate with its program members.
After the technical sessions, the one and only Ursula Stewart led an engaging panel discussion. For those who don’t know, Ursula is the Grantmaking Industry Advisor at Salesforce. She is an outstanding resource when it comes to nonprofits and technology and meeting her in person was probably one of the main highlights of the day for me! The panel featured the brilliant Antonio “Tony” Daniels (Associate Director of Volunteer and Church Engagement) from Breakthrough and the iconic trio of Alexandra Greenwald (Managing Director of Marketing and Communications), DanaMarie Carreon (Managing Director of Volunteer Recruitment and Stewardship), and Dr. Delaina Washington (Director of Research) from Chicago Scholars. The panelists shared victories and challenges they face at their respective nonprofits and offered insights on how they use Salesforce technology to drive more impact in their work.
Following the panel, there was an abundance of networking, complete with beverages, bites, and several volunteer activities provided by our gracious nonprofit attendees.
I cannot thank or shout out enough to Kayla DeSouza and Mikayla Mitchell of BOLDforce Chicago for bringing Plative on board to support such an outstanding meetup. My heart is filled with hope and gratitude for the incredible nonprofits that continue to do so much good in Chicago.
The overarching theme of the afternoon was leveraging the power of technology to increase impact. If you’re a nonprofit professional feeling overwhelmed by economic challenges or other forces beyond your control, you’re not alone. Don’t get left behind as the most impactful nonprofits in Chicago turn to Salesforce’s Nonprofit Cloud to fulfill their missions and make Chicago—and the world—a better place.