MLP for Bridge
Summary
Managing individual people and relationships within Salesforce for nonprofits is complicated by the platform's original B2B design. The Household Account Model pioneered by the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) effectively tracks individuals via household accounts, but it might be better adapted as an individual account model for simpler use cases. Affiliations and relationships are important to track history and context, which standard Salesforce features like Person Accounts and Contacts to Multiple Accounts do not fully support or simplify. Small nonprofits need a solution like Bridge that improves usability and better fits their needs without the complexity of current standard options.
Takeaways
- Use a custom Individual Account Model instead of standard Person Accounts for simpler individual tracking.
- Track affiliations and primary affiliations to maintain historical contact-organization relationships.
- Leverage flexible relationship objects to manage key personal connections like spouses or guardians.
- Minimal fundraising features may be sufficient; focus on core contact and relationship management first.
- Standard Salesforce features exist but are often too complex or limited for small nonprofits.
Last post I wrote about Nonprofit Bridge . While I have a lot of opinions about it, I'm trying very hard to let this be a project with input from multiple voices. But I can't help myself; I'm already thinking about features. I don't like the idea of a minimum viable product, that threshold seems too low. But what would be the minimum lovable product ? First of all, I have no idea if Bridge is going to eventually involve an installable package (locked, unlocked, managed, unmanaged, ...?), or merely a GitHub repo of metadata with instructions how you can get that metadata into your org, or something else entirely, People much smarter than I, with better understanding of the pros and cons for various ways of "publishing" or "releasing," will need to discuss.