Bloomerang vs. Salesforce for Nonprofits
Which CRM Fits Your Mission and Your Future?
Choosing a nonprofit CRM means choosing how your team will work together, understand your constituents, and support your mission for years to come.
You might be moving beyond spreadsheets, replacing a system that no longer meets your needs, or considering a switch from Bloomerang to Salesforce. Wherever you’re starting, the decision deserves a look at both your current challenges and your plans for the future.
The most compelling technology story often starts with what people can accomplish with it. Can your staff spend less time gathering information? Can your teams coordinate more easily? Can leadership get a clearer picture of your organization’s work?
A Side-by-Side Comparison
Bloomerang’s Giving Platform brings together fundraising, donor management, and volunteer engagement in an accessible, user-friendly system. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud supports fundraising, programs, outcomes, and volunteer management within a highly configurable CRM platform.
| Area | Bloomerang | Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Core focus | Fundraising and supporter engagement | Connecting constituent relationships and nonprofit operations |
| Donor management | Giving history, donor profiles, segmentation, and engagement tools | Fundraising capabilities within a broader constituent management platform |
| Programs and outcomes | Evaluate how your program requirements would connect with its fundraising and engagement tools | Dedicated program and outcome management capabilities |
| Automation | Tools supporting fundraising and supporter engagement; confirm support for your specific workflows | Configurable business workflows through Salesforce Flow; marketing requirements should be scoped separately |
| Reporting | Fundraising, campaign, supporter, and volunteer reporting, including conversational reporting capabilities | Reporting across configured nonprofit processes and connected data |
| AI capabilities | Fundraising-focused tools, including Penny and donor intelligence capabilities; availability varies by offering | Agentforce capabilities supporting nonprofit work; confirm required licenses, setup, and usage costs |
| Getting started | Assess the onboarding and setup required for your selected products | Plan for configuration, data preparation, testing, and staff training |
| Long-term fit | Worth considering when its established workflows meet your requirements | Particularly compelling when several teams need a system shaped around evolving processes |
Note that specific features depend on packaging, licensing, configuration, and integrations. Here, we’re focusing on Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (NPC). Older Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) implementations can differ. Agentforce AI capabilities should be evaluated separately rather than assumed to be included with every NPC license.
Learn more about the Bloomerang Giving Platform and Salesforce’s nonprofit offerings.
How many nonprofits use Salesforce and Bloomerang?
Both providers have substantial nonprofit communities. Salesforce reports more than 60,000 nonprofit clients, while Bloomerang reports serving more than 24,000 nonprofits through its Giving Platform. These figures describe each provider’s broader nonprofit reach. They do not establish how many organizations use Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud specifically or each individual Bloomerang product.
Sources: Salesforce and Bloomerang.
Start with What Your Nonprofit Needs to Accomplish
Your starting point affects your priorities.
If you’re choosing your first CRM, identify the information you need to organize and the tasks your staff repeat most often. Think beyond importing a contact list: decide who will use the system, which relationships you need to track, and what reports will help you make decisions.
If you’re replacing another platform, document what works today alongside what causes frustration. Use the selection process to address those gaps and preserve the capabilities your staff depend on.
If you’re already using Bloomerang, identify the specific improvements you expect from Salesforce. Those improvements should be valuable enough to justify migration, training, and ongoing administration.
In all three situations, ask: Can you show us how our team would complete “this specific work” in your system?
A demonstration built around your real requirements is more useful than a tour of features you may never use.
Why Salesforce Can Be the Better Fit
You want fundraising and program delivery to work together
Your nonprofit’s relationships often extend across departments. Your technology should help staff understand those connections while respecting access boundaries.
Consider a community organization preparing a funder report. Its development team tracks contributions, while program staff maintain participation and service information elsewhere. Producing the report requires several people to gather and reconcile information.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud’s program and outcome management capabilities support participant tracking, service delivery, and evaluation. For nonprofits seeking a shared foundation for this work, that breadth can be a meaningful advantage.
You don’t need to be a large organization to benefit from connected information. The relevant questions are how your teams work, what they need to know, and which information should remain restricted.
Your processes require flexibility
A CRM should support the steps your staff need to take.
Imagine that a gift meeting certain criteria should notify a relationship manager, create a follow-up task, and update an internal record. Salesforce Flow can be configured to respond to record changes, create or update related records, and send notifications. These business-process automations do not inherently require purchasing Marketing Cloud.
That flexibility becomes useful when workflows cross departments or follow rules specific to your organization.
For a first-time CRM buyer, this may mean replacing an email-and-spreadsheet process. For an organization changing platforms, it may mean finally addressing a workaround staff have used for years.
Ask both providers to demonstrate your priority workflows and explain what comes included, what needs configuration, and who will maintain it.
You’re evaluating how AI could support your team
AI belongs in a CRM evaluation, but it should be tied to work your staff actually need to complete.
Bloomerang offers AI tools focused on fundraising, including donor insights, conversational reporting, and help preparing outreach. Salesforce offers Agentforce/AIforce capabilities supporting work across fundraising, programs, and volunteer management. Specific capabilities and access depend on the offering selected.
Ask each provider to demonstrate a task using information and processes similar to yours. What data does the tool need? Can it take action, or does it suggest a next step? What will staff review before anything reaches a donor, participant, or volunteer?
Then confirm availability, licensing, usage costs, and ongoing support. Your decision should rest on capabilities available for your proposed implementation.
For organizations evaluating Salesforce, the opportunity is to connect AI with the broader processes they choose to manage on the platform. The value depends on a clear use case, reliable data, appropriate access, and thoughtful setup.
Explore Bloomerang’s AI offerings and Salesforce’s nonprofit AI capabilities.
You’re planning for more than today’s requirements
A good CRM decision considers where your organization is heading. If you’re planning to expand programs, introduce a new service, or bring additional teams into a shared system, Salesforce deserves consideration when that roadmap calls for broader operations on one platform.
You can approach implementation in phases. Start with the capabilities that address your most pressing needs, then add functionality when your team is ready. At Canvas Cloud, we help nonprofits prioritize their processes, resources, and mission when designing Salesforce solutions. That gives each phase a clear purpose and helps the organization prepare for what comes next.
What about Ease of Use and Ongoing Support?
Ease of use belongs near the top of any CRM evaluation. Staff need to feel confident completing their everyday work. Salesforce requires decisions about configuration, data, training, and administration. Make those responsibilities part of your evaluation from the beginning. Ask to see what a fundraiser, program coordinator, or executive would actually use. Evaluate whether screens are relevant, reports are understandable, and common tasks are straightforward. Include the people who will use the system in that review. Then identify who will support it after launch. Depending on your organization, that may involve an internal administrator, a consulting partner, or a combination of both.
At Canvas Cloud, we bring strategy and creative problem-solving to those decisions. Our focus is on building sustainable tech solutions and empowering the people who use them. Bloomerang may be the right choice when its established workflows meet your needs. Salesforce becomes especially compelling when you have clear requirements for greater flexibility and a plan to support them.
Compare the Full Cost of Ownership
Licensing is one part of a CRM investment. Ask both providers for a proposal based on the capabilities your organization expects to use. Include implementation, data migration, integrations, payment processing, training, and ongoing support in your evaluation. If AI is part of your plan, confirm whether it requires a particular subscription, an add-on, or usage-based spending. Also ask what your team will need to configure and maintain.
For Salesforce, review eligibility for the Power of Us program and confirm which licenses are available to your organization. Note that Nonprofit Cloud is now the default product selection on the Power of Us portal when applying for the 10 free licenses. Donated licenses can help with subscription costs, while implementation and ongoing administration still need a budget. A useful comparison shows what it will take to launch successfully and keep the system working well over time.
Planning Your Implementation or Migration
Whether your information lives in spreadsheets, Bloomerang, or another CRM, a successful transition starts with understanding what you have and what you need.
Before setting a launch date, work through five questions:
What information belongs in the new system? Inventory constituent records, gift history, relationships, notes, program information, and other records your team relies on.
What needs cleanup? Establish how you will handle duplicates, inconsistent values, and information that no longer serves a purpose.
What needs to connect? Review donation forms, payment processing, email tools, accounting systems, and other applications.
How will you verify the setup? Plan record reviews, reconciliation of giving totals where applicable, and testing of important workflows.
How will staff prepare? Include training, documentation, and support around launch.
If you’re establishing your first CRM, this is also the time to agree on shared definitions and responsibilities. Decide what information staff should enter and who will keep it accurate. If you’re migrating from an existing platform, determine how historical records and active processes will move. Recurring donations require a separate review with payment providers; transferring gift history does not automatically transfer active payment arrangements.
The goal is a system your staff can trust from the beginning.
How Canvas Cloud Helps You Move Forward
Your Salesforce needs will change as your organization develops. Canvas Cloud supports that work through implementations, migrations, optimizations, and managed services.
Salesforce implementations. For nonprofits adopting Salesforce, we help define requirements and configure a foundation around your priorities. That includes understanding how your team works and what it needs to accomplish.
CRM migrations. When you’re moving from Bloomerang or another system, the transition needs a scope based on your data, integrations, and selected Salesforce solution. Migration planning should preserve useful information and support the workflows you want going forward.
Salesforce optimizations. If your organization already uses Salesforce, we can help improve its configuration, connect other tools, and introduce functionality as needs evolve.
Collab Managed Services™. Our ongoing partnership supports system maintenance, improvements, and team enablement. Depending on the engagement, that can include administration, reports and dashboards, automation, release management, and strategic planning.
Choosing a platform is one decision. Having a partner who helps you continue getting value from it is another.
Which CRM Is Right for Your Nonprofit?
The best starting point is a clear picture of the work your organization needs to do. If your priorities center on fundraising and supporter engagement, evaluate how well Bloomerang’s workflows meet them. If you need to connect more departments, support distinct processes, and develop your system over time, Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud deserves a close look. That applies whether you’re buying your first CRM or reassessing a system you’ve used for years.
My perspective is that Salesforce’s strongest advantage is the opportunity to build around your mission and the people advancing it. With thoughtful implementation and ongoing support, that flexibility can help your organization work more effectively today and prepare for what comes next.
Choosing between Bloomerang and Salesforce? Book a conversation with Canvas Cloud. We’ll help you explore your requirements, understand your options, and plan a practical path forward.
