An organization’s constituency is made up of countless different connections. Board members, donors and volunteers are only the beginning of what can quickly become a vast network of affiliations. That network grows in complexity when the same individual holds multiple roles within the organization and externally. Those responsible for tracking these networks often use a CRM to maintain a single and comprehensive source of truth. The Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) allows organizations to track complex connections using Affiliations. In this post we will explain how to leverage Salesforce Affiliations for a nonprofit use case.

When to Use Affiliations

Affiliations can be used to track multiple historic and current connections for the same individual. For example, tracking board members may seem like a straightforward task. It becomes more complicated, however, when an organization also wants to track where their board members are employed, if they are retired or if they serve on the board of another organization. An individual’s connections do not occur in a vacuum, they are all important pieces of information that form a 360-degree view of your constituency. Identifying this information when it is spread across disparate systems is a challenge. Using Campaigns, Notes or custom fields may be difficult to report on and maintain. Affiliations can solve these problems by consistently tracking multiple connections over time.

Popular Affiliation use cases for nonprofits include:

• Board Members (including additional roles, chair, emeritus, honorary, life, etc.)
• Committee Members
• Employee/Employer
• Retiree/Employer

Track Multiple Affiliations Per Contact

The Affiliation object’s ability to track a contact’s connections makes it particularly useful for nonprofit use cases. When tracking a board member, for example, staff need to know whether the member is also serving as Chair and what their service dates are. The example below depicts Melissa’s ‘Primary’ Affiliation as a board member since 2014. Her historic role as Chair between July 2016 and June 2017 is also listed. Users can assign a Primary Affiliation for each contact, and any Account can be the Primary Affiliation for multiple contacts. This is helpful in identifying the connections that are most important for an organization without losing the greater context provided by their other Affiliations.

Tip: Rather than adding roles for “Former Member” or “Former Chair” consider using the “Status” field along with the Start Date and End Date to identify if a role is current or past.

Another nonprofit use case is identifying donors, which requires a holistic understanding of an organization’s donor base. This means tracking internal connections, including whether they are also a board member. And, external connections such as whether the person is retired or employed.

To make this vision a reality in Salesforce, an admin could:

• Create a new picklist field named “Affiliation Role”
• Create new Affiliation record types “Board” and “Employment”
• Assign role values for the Board Affiliation, which could include Member, Chair, Emeritus, or Life
• Assign role values for the Employment Affiliation, which could include Employee or Retiree

Tracking this information provides a 360-degree view of donors that can help with prospecting and networking.

Affiliation Best Practices

The Affiliation object can be a useful tool for many organizations, but it is not perfect. The NPSP Role field is a text field, which can lead to inconsistency and inaccurate reporting. To maintain high data quality some organizations create a custom picklist field to replace the Role field. This will avoid human error such as spelling mistakes and will ensure consistent reporting. For the picklist field to be displayed, a Salesforce admin should update page layouts and include Related List Properties.

Each organization has their own needs and requirements that inform how to best use Affiliations in Salesforce. It is important to understand your organization’s network before you begin adding values or new fields. Work with your team to identify needs and requirements, noting that the requirements for tracking your internal board may be different than tracking external connections. Determine what roles, dates or other details need to be tracked. It is better to start small and add more as your system grows.

As with all data, Affiliations will only be useful if they are properly maintained. Reviewing Affiliations on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly) will ensure accuracy. Creating and scheduling audit reports can encourage users to review and update Affiliations. For example, regularly scheduling an audit report of current board members can be useful to the staff person who is responsible for board organization and management. As you create your audit reports it is helpful to include Status, Start Date and End Date in addition to Name and Role.

Summary + Conclusion

Affiliations are a useful tool for managing a large network of constituents. They provide a 360-degree view by tracking connections within the organization and outside of it. When leveraged properly, the tool can lead to enhanced relationship management and data quality.