As we spoke about at our last meeting the format and cost of training for nonprofits has changed. It became public yesterday and I thought you would all like to have an update. Today I received the following from Salesforce:

North America - Nonprofit Training Policy

• All courses held in North America are offered at a 50% discount off the list price to nonprofits and partners exclusively serving nonprofit clients
• See the company site for the current list price as well as the schedule for each course
• Three seats will be given priority advanced confirmation per class
• After registration someone will contact you to schedule you for the first available class of your choice
• This offer is available only to nonprofit organizations receiving donated or discounted licenses and partners with an exclusive nonprofit client base
• Verification of your organization's nonprofit status or nonprofit exclusive partner will occur upon registration
• This policy does not apply to classes held in EMEA & APAC. EMEA/APAC should continue to register on the company website and enter the promotion code "nonprofit"
• Frequently Asked Questions: FAQ
• PLEASE NOTE: There is currently a 12 - 16 week waiting list for seats available to nonprofits at the 50% discount in popular cities including New York, Boston, and Washington D.C. In order to bypass the waiting list, you may register for the course at a 20% discount. Use the same registration below and notify the salesforce.com representative that contacts you that you that you are interested in the first available seat at the 20% nonprofit discount.
• Click here to register

PLEASE NOTE: There is currently a 12 - 16 week waiting list for seats available to nonprofits at the 50% discount in popular cities including New York, Boston, and Washington D.C. In order to bypass the waiting list, you may register for the course at a 20% discount. Use the same registration below and notify the salesforce.com representative that contacts you that you that you are interested in the first available seat at the 20% nonprofit discount.

Here is a listing of upcoming Administrator and Developer courses

ADM-201 - Dec 02 2008 - Washington, DC
ADM-301 - Dec 08 2008 - Boston, MA
ADM-201 - Dec 15 2008 - Philadelphia, PA
ADM-301 - Dec 15 2008 - New York, NY
ADM-201 - Jan 06 2009 - Baltimore, MD
ADM-201 - Jan 26 2009 - Philadelphia, PA
ADM-301 - Jan 26 2009 - New York, NY
DEV-501 - Jan 26 2009 - New York, NY
ADM-201 - Feb 02 2009 - New York, NY
ADM-201 - Feb 17 2009 - Washington, DC
ADM-201 - Feb 17 2009 - Washington, DC
DEV-401 - Feb 23 2009 - New York, NY
ADM-201 - Mar 02 2009 - New York, NY
ADM-201 - Mar 02 2009 - Baltimore, MD
ADM-201 - Mar 16 2009 - Washington, DC
ADM-201 - Mar 16 2009 - New York, NY
DEV-501 - Mar 16 2009 - New York, NY
ADM-301 - Mar 23 2009 - Reston, VA
ADM-301 - Mar 23 2009 - Philadelphia, PA
ADM-201 - Mar 30 2009 - New York, NY

We had a small but extremely productive meeting.

The meeting was held at NPower and a vocal core attended. Thanks to all that could make it and to those that could not, we hope you can attend the next meeting.

In fact upcoming meetings were the first order of business. We have tentatively set meetings for the following:

·         December 10th - the Success tour is in town and we will link with that in some way (Time TBD) see information on the right

·         January 21th - Tentatively set for the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (9:00 – 11:00)

·         February 18th - Tentatively set for the reinvestment fund. (9:00 – 11:00)

Next we talked about Salesforce certification and training. There will be additional information on training coming from Salesforce in the near future so keep your eyes open for that. Additional information on nonprofit training can be found at: http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/trainingpolicy.

Or for more info on certification go to: http://www.salesforce.com/community/crm-best-practices/resource-training.jsp.

Next the four of the meeting attendees that also went to Dreamforce all spoke on their takeaways and the new technology that was introduced. If you can get to Dreamforce you won’t be sorry you went. Save the date November 18-20 2009! If you would like to see what you missed go to : http://www.salesforce.com/community/crm-best-practices/resource-training.jsp to see video of the keynote speeches and breakout sessions.

The next order of business was a review of new features in Winter 09:

Highlights are

Scheduled emailing of reports

Event creation updates and drag and drop

Ideas

And some cool new stuff regarding cases and campaigns

Follow the link for more info.

http://www.salesforce.com/community/winter09_home.jsp

Again, thanks to those that attended, and to the rest I hope to see you at the success tour.

To join the user group and get on the mailing list

The nonprofit resources page

Thanks,

Dean

Take your Salesforce skills—and your career—to a new level! Join us for free training and best practices on groundbreaking on-demand innovations, including Force.com—the world’s first platform as a service. Attend either or both of these skills-packed sessions:

Morning Session: Dream, Build, Succeed with Force.com

• Get hands-on experience building apps without programming
• Learn to build any app you can imagine—for CRM or beyond 
• Pick up practical Force.com skills from experts
• All attendees get a free Force.com Workbook

Afternoon Session: Manage, Share, Succeed with Salesforce CRM

• Learn to get the most out of Salesforce CRM
• Get hands-on experience with new Winter ’09 features
• Experience the Best of Dreamforce ’08
• Network with your peers in Birds-of-a-Feather Roundtables   

It has been a couple of months since our last meeting but hope that you can attend the November User Group meeting.

WHEN: Wednesday, November 12th from 9:00-11:00 a.m.

MEETING TOPICS: We will talk about Winter 09 enhancements, Dreamforce, and the new Nonprofit Template. As always send me an email with your ideas.

LOCATION: At the NPower PA offices located at 1211 Chestnut Street, Suite 400, Philadelphia, PA 19107. The office is located a couple of blocks from the Market East SEPTA station and a parking garage is located on 12th street between Market and Chestnut Streets.

I hope to see you!

Dean

Dreamforce is just 3 weeks away!
Join us for the
Salesforce.com User & Developer Conference
San Francisco November 2-5, 2008

There are over 450 nonprofits coming to Dreamforce '08 and there's still time for you to join us. Dreamforce is the perfect place to connect with peers and Salesforce experts in order to pick up ideas on how to drive campaigns, automate communications, integrate applications, and measure effectiveness. Come participate in nonprofit specific sessions including:

   - The Platform to Change the World
   - Unleash the Power of the Force
   - More than the Bottom Line: Measuring Your Impact
   - Beyond CRM
   - Driving Success with Collaboration

These examples are a sampling of the 250 sessions you can attend. You can read about all sessions here: http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF08/tracks/learn.jsp#. In addition, you can attend hands-on trainings, join roundtable discussions, meet new people at our nonprofit networking event at San Francisco's dazzling Starlight Room, and participate in many more nonprofit exclusive events.  Whether you are a brand new user or Salesforce veteran, Dreamforce '08 has a wealth of resources for you to learn how to better achieve your mission using Salesforce in your organization.

We have a limited number of spaces remaining at the Nonprofit / Educator rate of $199 USD for nonprofit and educator attendees (versus the standard registration rate of $1,199). This rate is for the sole use of nonprofit and educational institutions as well as partners that exclusively serve this community.

To register, visit http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF08/register.jsp and enter registration code PENP199.

You also have access to a $100 discount to our Hands On Training on November 1st and 2nd.  Using DFNPEDU discount code you can attend 1 day of training for $600 or 2 days of training for $1200.  Learn more about the class offerings here: http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF08/tracks/learn.jsp?s=4.

Meeting Notes from the Philadelphia Non Profit salesforce.com User Group: May 14, 2008

What a great learning session! Our guest presenter, Judi Sohn, was very informative!

Judi is a Mac user, so we first asked if she can use Demand Tools from CRM Fusion, with the Mac OS. Judi does this all the time and explained that after she readies her files for use in Demand Tools, she just drags the files over and drops them to the PC side on her MAC. She can then run the Demand Tools application from her MAC.

Judi is also very invested in Google docs, and showed us two Visio documents, one of her organizations data collection methods prior to using salesforce.com and then another after the salesforce.com implementation.

Judi is fortunate that her Executive team sponsored the implementation at www.fightcolorectalcancer.org and promoted the mandate internally that 'If it's not in salesforce.com, it did not happen.'

Fightcolorectalcancer.org is using salesforce.com with an integration to/from Convio. Convio is an application which supports Online Fundraising, Email Marketing, Advocacy, and Event Fundraising. Its target user audience is primarily the non-profit sector. Judi demonstrated how her organization uses both tools simultaneously. The integration captures any contacts entered into the Convio website and migrates contact data to salesforce.com. This powerful combination of tools supports an informational call center for victims of colon cancer and their loved ones. There is a HIPAA component to the data collected in these communications, Judi enables the confidentiality required using salesforce.com roles and profiles for users.

What Judi is doing for her organization is tracking all on and off line interactions using salesforce.com and Convio. The online advocacy needs are addressed by Convio, and the donations captured on Convio include an on-line store of products designed to spread the word about colon cancer. The actual inventory of these products and the order fulfillment is tracked in salesforce.com, but the order is placed through Convio. Judi uses three custom objects to track the inventory and order fulfiullment. Her inventory availability is on-demand! Any major or individual gifts to the organization are tracked in  salesforce.com's opportunity module. One of the 'secrets' that Judi shared was that this integration can 'synch' campaigns, so if you have a matching campaign on the Convio and salesforce.com 'sides', the actual campaigns with their responses can be tracked in salesforce.com.

Here is the really interesting part - if a constituent or contact enters the Convio site to take an advocacy action, perhaps notify an elected official, that action is stored to the Contact record in salesforce.com. Imagine the possibilities! If you have a collection of salesforce.com contacts who believe in contributing to a bill being passed for a medical reason, AND you have a motion on the floor of congress pertinent to your cause, you can mass email all of these advocacy contacts to again contact their congressman. Pretty Powerful!

Judi has automated the 'synch' between Convio and salesforce.com. Judi cautions that Convio is strongly dependent upon the email address of the constituent or contact. Therefore if you mark the contact in salesforce.com as an email 'opt-out', the synch for that contact may be broken. She is seeking a solution for this issue.

Judi then closed with a discussion as to her organizations use of Conga. This is a powerful third party tool for salesforce.com which generates snail mail. It is designed to replace the mail merge function of salesforce.com and produces letters, labels and envelopes without any MS Word interaction. When sending a snail mail batch, Conga also stores this communication as an activity to the salesforce.com contact. Best part?? Conga can be run from a salesforce.com report!

This was the best demonstration for this User Group we have had to date, and I must thank Judi Sohn for coming over from Northern New Jersey to present!

The next meeting is set for June 11, Wednesday, from 10 AM to Noon. Our friends from the Cultural Alliance will host. They are located at 1616 Walnut Street in Philadelphia. I will send a reminder email.

Topics for the next meeting include a demonstration of the Summer '08 salesforce.com release by Tucker MacLean, and  a new member, Chris Conroy, of World Benefactor wishes to speak to us about Google apps with salesforce.com. Check out their new website: The World Benefactor Website

We have a few requests - how to handle data exceptions, how to see how others are handling collection of data from multiple sources, and the always interesting Outlook 'synch'. If you have an issue or question for the group, please send an email to Dean Graham at dean@NPowerPA.org.

Great meeting! Thanks also to the Voice Foundation for hosting.
See you all on June 11--------------------------------------------------------------------------Maura

Please note: Due to the large amount of material gathered at this meeting, please feel free to post a comment, as this is only one person's view of this meeting.

                               Exciting News! - Special Presentation

Our next Philadelphia Non-Profit salesforce.com user group meeting will be held Wednesday
May 14 at 9:00 AM. The Voice Foundation has arranged a new location for us. Many thanks to Julia and Catherine!

Drexel University Medical School
219 N. Broad Street, 10th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107

Telephone: (215) 833-3351

All of the Philadelphia Non Profit User Group is invited. We will serve light refreshments. We have a special presentation for this meeting. Judi Sohn of Fightcolorectalcancer.org is going to demonstrate how her organization uses salesforce.com with Convio. Currently they collect member registrations and all financial transactions with thier implementation. Sudi is also exploring the functionality that adds advocacy alert actions as member response in Salesforce campaigns. Can't wait to see this!

If you wish to pass on this to other co-workers that are not members of the user group, please have them register at: http://dreamforce.blogs.com/join

Meeting Agenda:

• We will do a brief User Group business update
• Judi Sohn will make a presentation showing salesforce.com integrated with Convio
• Bring the issues or solutions that you are experiencing in your salesforce.com implementation. We want to hear from you!
  

  Really looking forward to seeing everyone again!

                               Hello to all of our Philadelphia Non-Profit salesforce.com users!

Our next Philadelphia Non-Profit salesforce.com user group meeting will be held Wednesday
April 9 at 9:00 AM. We will be visiting some of our best users at Philagrafika.

Address: 728 South Broad Street, Second Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19146

Telephone: (215) 557-8433

All of the Philadelphia Non Profit User Group is invited. We will serve light refreshments. Since our inception in December 2007, we have grown from 12 members to 114  !! This blog becomes of greater importance when we have this many members as all will not be able to attend, so we will update the blog frequently.If you wish to pass on this to other co-workers that are not members of the user group, please have them register at: http://dreamforce.blogs.com/join

Meeting Agenda:

• We will discuss the latest release - Spring '08 For this meeting, concentration on the subject of Spring '08 will be addressed in the first hour. We will also review how to create a custom object with the relationships necessary to relate to Accounts or Contacts.
• Bring the issues or solutions that you are experiencing in your salesforce.com implementation. Let's discuss! We expect this session to be very interactive, so please come prepared with questions or your own personal lessons learned based on experience.

  Really looking forward to seeing everyone again!

Our next Philadelphia Non-Profit Salesforce.com user group will be held on:

Wednesday February 20 at 8:30 AM

At the Reinvestment Fund offices
718 Arch Street - Suite 300N
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Telephone: 215-833-3351

All of the Philadelphia Non Profit User Group is invited. Feel free to bring a friend.

We will serve light refreshments.

Meeting Agenda:

• Lights: Tucker MacLean will return to demo and discuss the latest release - Spring '08. This is a significant release and and we are excited to see this demo.
• Camera: Maura will do a brief demo fo the Pervasive tools, specifically the connectors which allow mapping of data from other applications to salesforce.
• Action: If we have time, we will do a short presentation on tasks that a salesforce.com Admin could do on a regular basis, like user maintenance and backups.
• Bring the issues or solutions that you are experiencing in your salesforce.com implementation. Let's discuss! We expect this session to be very interactive, so please come prepared with questions or your own personal lessons learned based on experience.

We really looking forward to seeing everyone again!

Directions

From I-95 (north or south)

Take the Center City Philadelphia exit, staying to the right onto exit ramp for Callowhill Street. Follow Callowhill Street west to 6th Street. Turn left at 6th, cross Race Street and turn right onto Arch Street.

Continue on Arch past 7th St. Park in street-level parking lot on right (before 8th Street). TRF is located across Arch Street in the Cast Iron Building, 718 Arch Street, Suite 3N.

From Schuylkill Expressway - I76 (West)

Take Vine Street Expressway into Center City. Exit at 8th Street. Turn right at bottom of exit ramp and follow across Race Street. Before next major street (Arch), park in street-level parking lot at corner of 8th and Arch (entrance on your left). TRF is located across Arch Street in the Cast Iron Building, 718 Arch Street, Suite 3N.

From I-95 (north or south) Take the Center City Philadelphia exit, staying to the right onto exit ramp for Callowhill Street. Follow Callowhill Street west to 6th Street. Turn left at 6th, cross Race Street and turn right onto Arch Street. Continue on Arch past 7th St. Park in street-level parking lot on right (before 8th Street). TRF is located across Arch Street in the Cast Iron Building, 718 Arch Street, Suite 3N. From Schuylkill Expressway - I76 (West) Take Vine Street Expressway into Center City. Exit at 8th Street. Turn right at bottom of exit ramp and follow across Race Street. Before next major street (Arch), park in street-level parking lot at corner of 8th and Arch (entrance on your left). TRF is located across Arch Street in the Cast Iron Building, 718 Arch Street, Suite 3N. Public Transportation TRF is within walking distance from SEPTA's Market-Frankford El (8th Street stop at 8th and Market Streets), the Broad-Ridge Spur (8th and Filbert Streets - end of line), and the Market East Regional Rail Station (11th & Filbert Streets). We are also within walking distance from PATCO's 8th and Market Streets station.

Public Transportation

TRF is within walking distance from SEPTA's Market-Frankford El (8th Street stop at 8th and Market Streets), the Broad-Ridge Spur (8th and Filbert Streets - end of line), and the Market East Regional Rail Station (11th & Filbert Streets). We are also within walking distance from PATCO's 8th and Market Streets station.