Program management features

The program management features are much more recent in the Salesforce.org timeline. Program management features include both open source and paid modules.

The open source programs include the following:

• Program Management Module
• Volunteers for Salesforce
• NPSP Reports and Dashboards

The paid programs include the following:

• Nonprofit Cloud Case Management with Service Cloud
• Tableau

Program Management Module

Program Management Module (PMM) encompasses a wide range of programs and/or services and provides a framework to track and automate what your team may currently be recording in a spreadsheet. The module is easily installed from AppExchange and comes with a pre-created profile and unmanaged reports to get you started quickly.

PMM only consists of five custom objects, so it is highly customizable. It starts with a baseline and accurate reporting to get your programs up and running in the Salesforce environment. It's a 1, 2, 3 process (once it's been configured) to define the nonprofit's programs and services, add clients to those areas, and report on the metrics with the handy prebuilt reports included in PMM:

Figure 1.6 – A sample Program Management home page in Salesforce

Volunteers for Salesforce

Volunteers for Salesforce is also a free, open source application available on AppExchange. You may also see it abbreviated as V4S. It is also considered a part of PMM, although it is installed separately, and is designed to help nonprofits manage volunteers and track their volunteer hours, shifts, and jobs. The functionality to host volunteer signup for a specific job and/or shift on a nonprofit website is also an available feature. V4S has been around since Groundwire originally created it in 2012 and became a part of the NPSP offering in 2016. We will explore the use cases for V4S and best practices for implementing it in Chapter 11, Configuring Additional Features and Security:

Figure 1.7 – A sample page for V4S for finding and assigning volunteers