What’s New in the Salesforce Summer ’25 Release: Nonprofit Edition
The Salesforce Summer ’25 Release looks to provide a significant upgrade, equipping nonprofit organizations with advanced tools across essential functions. Salesforce is hoping these intelligent features and streamlined processes help boost efficiency, strengthen constituent relationships, and ultimately increase the impact of nonprofit missions. When it comes to Salesforce and Nonprofits, we’ll start with Fundraising as the vast majority of Nonprofits on Salesforce use it for Fundraising.
Smarter Fundraising: Leveraging AI and Enhanced Data Management
As we all know, the fundraising landscape is evolving, and nonprofits need sophisticated tools to cultivate meaningful donor relationships. The Summer ’25 Release expands on the impact of Agentforce with an innovative assistant to provide valuable insights into donor profiles. By analyzing donor giving history, philanthropic interests, and publicly available wealth information, Agentforce can now help development teams personalize outreach strategies, identify potential major donors, and tailor engagement efforts for maximum effectiveness. This intelligence is further supported by a centralized system for organizing donor research data, eliminating fragmented information and enabling a holistic view of each supporter.
Another feature that the Nonprofit community has been asking for is being delivered: the new Gift Entry Grid. The Gift Entry Grid streamlines the recording of individual and batch donations with an intuitive interface, reducing manual effort and minimizing the potential for errors.
Finally, for organizations that manage complex planned gifts, such as annuities and bequests, the Summer ’25 Release provides the Gift Planning Object to simplify administration, track obligations, and ensure compliance. These enhancements allow fundraising professionals to dedicate more time to cultivating relationships and less to manual data entry.
Volunteer Management Revamp: Modernizing Engagement and Expanding Reach
Summer ’25 is bringing a viable solution for organizations trying to find a native solution to replace Volunteers for Salesforce (V4S). The Summer ’25 Release introduces a completely redesigned Volunteer Management system aimed at optimizing volunteer engagement and administrative efficiency. The new system focuses on simplifying the organization of volunteer initiatives, accurately tracking volunteer hours, and providing comprehensive data and insights on volunteer contributions. To expand volunteer recruitment efforts, organizations can now create dedicated volunteer portals on Experience Cloud. These portals allow prospective volunteers to easily browse available opportunities, register their interest, and manage their participation. Volunteer Management is now included in the Enterprise Edition of Nonprofit Cloud, making these powerful tools accessible to a wider range of organizations. This release also includes new fields for capturing crucial information such as volunteer applications, benefits provided to volunteers, and their specific skills, enabling more targeted recruitment and engagement.
Easier Grant Making: Automating Workflows and Improving Reporting
In addition to Fundraising, Grant Making is also getting some attention in this release. The Summer ’25 update addresses key pain points in this area by introducing automation capabilities. Organizations can now automatically configure necessary components for funding awards, such as budget allocations and reporting requirements, as well as schedule disbursement timelines. This reduces the risk of missed deadlines and ensures consistent grant administration. Demonstrating the impact of grant funding is crucial, and the new release provides pre-built report templates designed to quickly generate progress updates and outcome measurements, simplifying the reporting process for funders and stakeholders.
Better Program & Case Management: Enhancing Tracking and Service Delivery
Last but not least, for organizations leveraging Salesforce to manage their programs and services the Summer ’25 Release introduces features designed to improve visibility into service utilization and enhance the client experience. The ability to track internal referrals provides valuable data on how individuals are accessing different programs within the organization, enabling better coordination of services and a more holistic approach to client needs. Recognizing the often iterative nature of assessments, the new save draft functionality prevents the loss of valuable work and allows for more thoughtful and comprehensive evaluations. Logging benefit disbursements provided to participants is now integrated directly within their profiles, creating a centralized record of support. Additionally, nonprofits now have the ability to issue ad-hoc benefits in bulk and streamline the process of delivering aid to multiple individuals simultaneously, improving efficiency and reach.
Cool Features for Everyone: Leveraging the Power of the Salesforce Ecosystem
Beyond the specific enhancements for fundraising, grant management, program management, and volunteer management, the Summer ’25 Release brings valuable features shared across the broader Salesforce platform to Nonprofit Cloud users. These include easily accessible services for support and guidance, pre-configured implementation plans for common processes like onboarding new staff or implementing new features, and a more intelligent rules engine for automating various tasks and workflows. Additionally, updates focused on data analysis, online form creation, and enhanced reporting capabilities provide nonprofits with the tools they need to gain deeper insights from their data, streamline online interactions, and communicate their impact more effectively.
A final item for our admins out there to keep an eye out for; Salesforce is releasing the BETA version of their new heir apparent of trust.salesforce.com with Personalized Trust Sites. The primary purpose of Personalized Trust is to provide a tailored view of your Salesforce service health. It uses an authenticated login process that leverages your Salesforce credentials. The benefits highlighted include the ability to get to the information that you need faster and access crucial updates on availability-related events and communications relevant to your specific Salesforce products and services in one easy-to-use location. It's important to note that Personalized Trust is explicitly labeled as a beta service. As a pilot or beta service, it is subject to specific Beta Services Terms, and its use is at the customer's sole discretion. I for one am looking forward to seeing the evolution of Personalized Trust Sites in the future.
Summary
In summary, the Salesforce for Nonprofits Summer ’25 Release delivers a significant step forward in providing nonprofit organizations with powerful, intuitive, and integrated tools. By focusing on intelligent automation, enhanced data management, and streamlined workflows, this update empowers nonprofits to operate more efficiently, engage their constituents more effectively, and ultimately dedicate more resources to achieving their critical missions.
Here are the key dates to be aware of in the build-up to Summer ’25:
Sandbox Preview Starts: 9th May 2025.
Production Release Weekends: 16th May, 6th June, and 13th June 2025.
At Canvas Cloud, we specialize in guiding organizations through complex Salesforce changes, helping them select and implement the best solutions for their needs. If you’re unsure about your next steps, we’re here to help.
